Author: doug

On New Years Day we made our way back to San Jose for our goodbyes and re-introduction to real life.  Here is Mario, our intrepid guide, sporting his newly-acquired sunglasses. In the rear-view mirror you can see Luis, our talented bus driver.  We thank them for all they did for us in their home country.

Today was our last non-travel day of our Costa Rican adventure.  Posted for your enjoyment is probably my favorite bird of the trip — the blue-grey tanager.  It’s not large, exotic, or ostentatious — just an attractive, common, competent little bird that will always remind me of this trip.  It doesn’t hurt that he’s the same color as our house 🙂 .

I took a picture of this tree — with Arenal Lake behind it — because it reminded me of trees we saw in South Africa on our trip there.
 

You be the jugde — this picture is from Africa in 2001.

Here’s a rare long view from the rainforest, courtesy of the hanging bridge (pedestrian suspension bridge) I was walking across.  The body of water in the back is the Pacific ocean.

I’m not sure the exact species of this flycatcher, but he sure is a handsome fellow.

These are not the double-crested cormorant that we have in Massachusetts, but neotropic cormorants.  Nice of them to pose for me.

We went on a very successful whale watch today, on which we saw 8-9 humpback whales, 2 sea turtles, and a pod of dolphins.  Here we have a baby whale and (presumably) its mother.

We spent Christmas day in this very Catholic country doing non-religious activities — snorkeling and driving around in a boat.
 

Our little boat went through this tunnel, before which some of us did feel compelled to say our prayers.

Our cabin at La Cusinga is quite nice.  Like all the cabins here, except for mechanical systems it was build entirely from materials found on site.  We’re told this is the honeymoon suite.

If you were to take the ficus tree in your typical office or hotel lobby and let it grow for 300 years, you’d get something that looks like this.