Our home is located in the village of San Antonio, near Santa Cruz, Turrialba, straight opposite the village church. The house is twelve years' old with big windows and wood interiors and is located at a height of 1220 m., a few killometers below the Turrialba volcano, now active, which is in good view of the house. This is dairy country but the forest remnants provide excellent birdwatching and the cloud forest of the volcano is just above us. The garden is about one acre in extent and produces many local fruits and vegetables. These include three species of banana, chayotes (a type of squash), ayotes (another squash), lemons, oranges and grapefruit, guava, níspero, granadilla (passion fruit), tomatoes and blackberries. We buy milk, cheese and eggs in the village. We have two small fish ponds with Japanese koi. Temperature stays pretty much between 60 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, so air conditioning and heating are not required. We do have a fireplace, but it´s ornamental for the most part.

Local tourism centres on the Turrialba volcano, Guayabo National Monument (20 minutes away from us by car, an hour and a half on foot), Juan Espino Blanco Reserve (private, ten minutes by car or 30 minutes on foot), and white-water rafting and canoeing on the Pacuare, Reventazón and Pejibaye rivers. The whole area is wonderful for mountain-biking and hiking. There are at least two spectacular waterfalls within a short distance. One is in the coffee town of Aquiares and is much visited by tourist groups, but the other (La Muralla) is close by our house on private land and must be close to 60 meters high. It´s in a beautiful spot and is not visited by tourists. Bird-watching, or birding as the Americans say, is first-class throughout the area. Near Turrialba, for example, is the town of Tuis at the entrance to the Sierra de Talamanca. One of the most famous bird-watching lodges in Costa Rica, the Rancho Naturista, is located near here, boasting some 290 species identified solely on the grounds of the lodge or at the nearby Rio Tuis. Another excellent birding spot is La Marta Reserve, near the town of Pejibaye.
I have so far identified 150 species at the house here in San Antonio, and a further 120 species in our area close by. You can check my birding blog at http://birdsforbeer.wordpress.com/ Resplendant quetzals are to be found only a few kilometers up the mountain at Los Bajos del Volcán. From Los Bajos, the Caribbean lowlands can be reached via a strenuous 8 hour walk through cloud forest and rain forest. On the other side of Turrialba, uphill from Tuis on a stunning mountain road, is the Chirripó Indigenous Reserve (Cabécar tribe). Turrialba is one of the few Costa Rican towns with regular visits from indigenous people. The Caribbean beaches are two hours´drive away on good roads, the first one winding through the mountains to Siquirres, and the second being a straight run from Siquirres through the lowlands to Limón on the coast. A one and a half hour drive roughly in the same direction gets you to the hop-off place to take boats to Tortuguero. The modern capital of Costa Rica, San José, is only 35 miles away in the other direction, but it takes two hours to get to the airport at Alajuela, because of the traffic in San José and because of the slow mountain road to Cartago (colonial ruins and basilica), ex-capital of the country located one hour from us. You can get to the Pacific beaches by a spectacular dirt road from Cartago without going through San José.
The weather here in the mountains is delightfully cool year-round (a nice relief when returning from the heat of the lowlands), so we require no air conditioning or heating. We do have a fireplace, which adds a nice touch in rainy weather. The local people are the nicest folks you could ever wish to meet. They are country people who chiefly raise dairy cows and produce milk and other dairy products, including the excellent Turrialba cheese, famous in Costa Rica. We are located directly in the village, opposite the church and school, so we are part of the community. The village (a few hundred inhabitants at most) has two small stores that stock only necessities, and a bar. Local food specialties are chicharrones, cajetas, Turrialba cheese, tamales and pancitos, not to mention trout and tilapia for those who like fish. The picturesque small town of Santa Cruz (4000) is four kilometers up the hill and offers a small supermarket and a few other businesses. There are several nice restaurants on the mountain road. The large town of Turrialba (40 000 pop.), offering all amenities, is 11 km downhill on a spectacular road, while the Turrialba volcano is about 20 km uphill (passing through Santa Cruz and La Pastora) on an even more spectacular one. A short drive beyond La Pastora and Pacayas is the turn-off to the Irazú Volcano, the highest in the country. Just outside Turrialba are the wonderful tropical botanical gardens of the CATIE University, which specialises in agronomy. CATIE's bird checklist currently stands at 371 species.

We live in Costa Rica, a small but wonderful country. Our house is a little off the beaten track for major Costa Rican tourism, but it is located in the center of the country. You can reach the Panamanian border at Sixaola in two and a half hours by car, and the Nicaraguan border at Los Chiles about four. The village of San Antonio, where we live as part of the community, is an ideal location for us. We also have undeveloped property with a spectacular view located at Lake Arenal, about three or four hours away in the north. We have traveled extensively in Costa Rica and can offer help in deciding which other parts of the country to visit. For birdwatching (birding)in Costa Rica we can offer our home at any time as an inexpensive base from which to explore, either with or without a guide. Wenn Sie in Costa Rica Vögel beobachten wollen, können Sie zu jeder Zeit sehr preisgünstig unser Haus benutzen, als Ausgangspunkt für Ausflüge, mit oder ohne meine Hilfe. Pour observer les oiseaux de Costa Rica vous pourrez utiliser notre maison à un prix pas cher comme base pendant toute l'année pour faire des excursions, sans ou avec mon accompagnement.



Birds for Beer

Our house is available June 2012-December 2012, and then from the beginning of February 2013. We are currently hoping to get a non-simultaneous exchange for June 7th to June 19th, 2012.

We are Ches and Paul, retired schoolteachers in San Antonio de Santa Cruz. Paul taught foreign languages (Spanish, German, French), while Ches taught kindergarten, and first and second grade. Ches is from Dallas, Texas, while Paul is from Yorkshire, England. We have three grown children, a daughter in N. Italy and a daughter in N. Ireland, and a son in England. We also have a cat, Shorty McCoy. Our interests are listening to music, birdwatching, reading, soccer, and travel. We do not smoke. Paul fiddles around a lot in the garden.

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