Doug's Project 365

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.

We saw our first monkeys of the trip today. This guy looks like he’s having a rough time of it.

Cattle egrets are easy to identify.  Sure, you say — they’re white birds, pretty big; so are a lot of birds.  But how many of them hang around with cows?
 
Here’s a flock:

 
Which then landed, proving their identity:

One of the most striking things about the rainforest is the amount of vegetation.  Some of the plants grow with their roots in the air, taking water and nutrients from rainfall.  These are called epiphytes.

This butterfly chysalis looks like it’s made of metal.  It’s not.

Note from Doug: I’m posting a few catch-up items from our trip, a few a day. As is my convention, I’m writing these as if I were writing on the day of the actual photo.

Lis and I are on vacation in Costa Rica.  We are posting to a separate blog and will post the good photos from the trip onto our Gallery once we return, but I’ll post a few good ones here.

Today’s photo is a dried-up fern frond.