There is just so much to see here at Mashpi that I will need to break down Day 2 into two posts. First, we started with breakfast in the gorgeous dining room. The view of the surrounding forest is amazing!
Our guide Santi greeted us after breakfast and we hiked down to the Mashpi Life Center. We saw this beautiful Beehive Ginger plant along the trail. The stalks growing with it look just like corn.
A little further along the trail we saw Santi scrambling to grab something on the ground, a scene he would repeat often. He had caught this little Rainbow Forest Racer. After he put it back on the ground it zipped away so fast I have no idea how he caught it in the first place!
Santi then spotted this little Rain Frog off the trail. It’s smaller than it looks in the photo, so I’m shocked at how easily he can see these things.
Santi then plucked this little praying mantis off of a plant he was walking by. Now he’s just showing off!
Fletcher actually spotted this spider lurking under a bamboo handrail. Santi took the photo, showing off his varied skills.
Fletcher also spotted these butterfly larva just outside the Life Center.
Also just outside the life center was this Seven-Lined Whiptail. What a combination of colors! The vivid blue color of the tail indicates that this is a youngster.
Santi took us inside of the Life Center so he could give us a tour of their butterfly lab. This first shot is baby butterfly larva on the back side of a leaf that they are chomping away at.
Those little larva will turn into these huge guys soon enough.
This larva is about full size, and will become a pupa with a home inside a chrysalis in the next few days. This is the larva of the Uniform Giant-Owl, the largest butterflies we would see at Maspi.
Here is one of the Giant-Owl butterflies in the Mashpi butterfly enclosure.
Santi carefully handled the above butterfly to show us the reason it has it’s name. To a predator at a distance, it looks like it could actually be an owl. These butterflies are so huge that unless they evolved like this, they never would have survived.
They have several of these cases set up with all of the chrysalis’ on display. You can see the butterflies who have recently emerged and are drying their wings before they take their first flight.
As we stood before these cases, the sun broke through and seemed to spur on the pupa to emerge. We watched for maybe 10 minutes and one after another came out of their chrysalis! I was able to catch one on video. I don’t see how the damn thing can hang on after he emerges…some sort of instinctual behavior.
The Mashpi enclosure has about 8 species of butterflies. This one is called the Confusing Mistwing (who comes up with a name like this?), and you can see right through their wings….which could cause some confusion I suppose.
The Giant-Owl butterflies really seemed to like Fletcher…or at the very least the color blue.
We stepped out of the butterfly enclosure and immediately felt cooler. It had to be 10 degrees warmer in there, and trust me, it’s already warm (and near 100% humidity) here! We relaxed on their beautiful deck in hopes of seeing some of the local birds.
This is the view from the deck. I gotta say, it was a rough place to hang out!
Santi baited some logs in front of the deck with fresh bananas, and almost immediately we had a visitor. This is a Flame-Rumped Tanager.
This is the Moss-Backed Tanager, which Santi advised us was the bird in the Mashpi logo.
Santi set up a spotting scope to see some of the birds that wouldn’t come close enough for my camera. He actually took this photo of a Tropical Kingbird with my camera via the spotting scope. This guy was about 100 yards away!
I believe this is a Flame-Faced Tanager, but I can’t find anything to confirm it. I even used an app that Santi recommended called “Merlin”, designed by Cornell University, but it came back with no matches. If anybody can confirm please let me know.
As we were departing the Life Center, Santi pointed out this beautiful little Dragonfly. I would have never seen it on my own.
He also spotted this iguana on the trail. He spotted it from maybe 30 yards away…as they don’t stick around if you get near them. This was taken with maximum zoom, and even at that distance he’s keeping an eye on me.
We were back at the lodge just in time for lunch. I took a shot from the viewing terrace, as the sun was out and it was fairly clear towards the distant mountains.
Up next, we ride the Sky Bikes, and climb a viewing platform in the heart of the forest.