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| A big iguana climbs the tree |
A travel day today, and it would be rough. Not on the feet, mind you, since the roughness was only in the roads we would be driving over.
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But first we wanted to get to another nature preserve, the Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde. Leo paid our admission, and gave each of us a ticket, and then we started walking. I took lots of pictures, but few of them were dramatic or photographically interesting. “Bosque Nuboso” means cloud(y) forest, and you can see the haze above us there; but there was no rain, and the day was bright, even if not sunny. Really excellent for photography, with its muted shadows. I really liked the lianas in the third row (first row of landscape-aspect pictures). That’s real jungle!And of course if you've been reading other pages here, especially in my site for New Zealand, you know that I’m enchanted by all sorts of ferns, and the right picture in the fourth row, with its close-up the left picture in the fifth row, really sends me into fits of pleasure.
As we walked, I got two nice pictures of the flowers to the right, which Mark says on his page for the next day is a “Sleeping Hibiscus”. It’s not uncommon: native as far north as the southern US states. (Upper picture: big image, small; lower picture: big image, small) I specially like the slightly dewy spider web that’s visible on the lower one. This time of day—it was only 8:52AM—was great for atmospherics, as you can see in the picture of the path winding into the haze, to the left below (big image, small). 
But I haven’t said anything about the Resplendent Quetzal! One of the other guides told Leo that a Quetzal had been seen not far from the trail, and Leo found it without much difficulty. He has a very nice angled telescope that permitted a good view, and Mark’s page even has some shots taken through the scope with his small (waterproof) camera, but the lighting was not favorable, and the pictures are not very satisfactory. But as Mark says, Judy was thrilled to be able to see one of these birds, the very ultimate achievement among birdwatchers. |
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| A lovely view, and notice the cobwebs (big image, small) | Resting on a bridge (big image, small) |
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| Big image, small |
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| Big image, small |
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Seeing the hat on Mark’s back reminded me of Stieglitz’s “The Steerage” yet when you look at that picture, you see that there’s no resemblance at all. But no matter: it’s the hat that makes the picture.
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| Just can’t stay away from those ferns! (Big image, small.) |
To the left, a lovely fat millipede. Unlike your friendly fast-running house centipede, predator on all sorts of unpleasant insects, millipedes all move very slowly. This one was typically leisurely, and I could take lots of shots of it, but they all look pretty much the same! Below that, a nice pink flower that Mark says is in the heath family (like Rhododendron and blueberry).
As the morning wore on, the sun came out and the shadows harshened—much less good for photography. I did take the picture of Mark photographing Judy, Lin, and Sean that you see on othe left, but we were sheltered in the forest’s shadows. (Big image, small.)
We left the Bosque Nuboso in mid-morning, and drove over a very rough road (“bone-shaking”, one of the guide books called it) down towards the Pacific Coast. We stopped for lunch at a big busy restaurant on the Pan-American Highway, and somewhere along the way I took a shot of the view across a valley. Maybe even through the bus window. (Big image, small.)
When we got to the coast, we stopped for a while on a long bridge over the Río Tárcoles, where a couple of dozen crocodiles waited below. Either for falling tourists, or for scraps of food that people are not supposed to be dropping down for them. I took lots of crocodile pictures, but as with the millipede, one picture turned out to look very much like any other. But here’s one below:
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Next day’s pictures, last installment of previous day’s pictures. Return to the central Costa Rica page; to the central travel page; to my home page.
