Saturday, June 16, 2007

These pictures are from my May 2007 trip through Central America. This set of pictures is from Costa Rica. Hit "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page to see more photos.

This is a typical scene in a cloud forest, where mist is ever present in the air, vines and aerial roots hang from every tree, and birdlife thrives.
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Waterfall in the cloud forest of Costa Rica. The area around the falls was covered in ferns, mosses and wild impatients and begonias.
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At Ecocentro Danaus a wildlife reserve outside of La Fortuna Costa Rica. This reserve was created 9 years ago by allowing farm land to revert back to forest and it already is filled with wildlife. The reserve also includes a butterfly farm (Danaus means Monarch Butterfly). These are two Long-eared Bats - they bite the rib of large leaves causing the leaves to fold over and create a little rain shelter for the bats. At this reserve we also saw a mother Three-toed sloth with a baby clinging to her back, agouti (think large guinea pig), and Broad-billed Herons.
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Friday, June 15, 2007

"Blue Jeans" poison dart frog, very small, less than an inch long.
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A very handsome Green Iguana getting a little sun. Some locals eat iguana in soup. This one was quite spectacular - it was between four and five feet long.
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Sugar cane being brought to a factory to be processed. Also saw several pineapple, orange, teak, guava and coffee plantations - a lot of these places smell really good when you drive by.
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During a motorized canoe trip down the Rio Frio through the Cano Negro Reserve we saw lots of different types of mammals such as this White-faced Capuchin Monkey eating palm fruits. Also saw Long-nosed Bats, Black Howler Monkeys (including one set of playful twins), both Two and Three-toed Sloth, River Turtles, Green Iguana and Emerald Basilisk (Google this lizard because it is absolutely crazy looking.) Soggy wet sloths have to be some of the saddest looking critters on this planet. We saw several sloth climbing in trees while we travelled down river to within a few miles of the border with Nicaragua.
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