La Paz Waterfall Gardens

In the rainforest, on a mountain side, down towards some magnificent waterfalls, on the side of an ancient (but active) volcano named Poa, in the central highlands of Costa Rica, on the eastern slope of the Central American mountain ridge, facing the Caribbean, but still miles and miles from the coast, there is a small wonderful place called La Paz Waterfall Gardens. There is a small hotel at this place too,  the Peace Lodge, looking out over the deep valley and the rainforest tree tops.   This is obviously a place designed to pull in ecotourists, but I loved the small scale, down to earth, and simplicity of this place.  I could easily spend a few days here and be happy!

We arrived by bus at the top of the mountain side, where the Peace Lodge is, and started our slow walk on well-maintained steps and paths down towards the aviary and butterfly houses, restaurant, and waterfalls. This is also a wildlife refuge, where animals that have been illegally captured or held as pets can live out their lives, if they can't be released into the wild again.  


This is the view from the Peace Lodge, and you can see the aviary to the lower left. The purple flowers are bougainvilleas, with gingers in the foreground and tree ferns lower down.  A short time after we arrived it started to rain, which is very appropriate for the rainy season in a rain forest, and I was very grateful for bringing both a rain jacket AND an umbrella.  Lots of photos could be taken without a wet camera...


This wild ginger has a funny name, Ker-Gawler (Hedychium gardnerianum). It is not from Costa Rica but an import from Himalayas.


Inside the giant aviary tent where birds flew free and were nearly tame.


Hello. I am a toucan.

The butterfly house will get its own blog post :)  After checking out the birds, the monkeys, the butterflies, and then passed by the hummingbird feeders in rain (which didn't stop the hummingbirds from visiting the feeders), it was time for lunch. (I bypassed the snake house, I don't care much for those cold blooded animals.) Buffet lunch of traditional Costa Rican food, and it was the best food I have ever had in Costa Rica.  Rice and beans (of course), tortillas, curry beef, chicken in Costa Rican BBQ sauce (not overly sweet), salsa, vegetables, salad, pork chili, mmmm, fresh fruit, and lots of other good stuff... no food in Costa Rica is spicy, but it is tasty!  I forgot to take a photo of the food, sorry!


This place has 24 hummingbird species, the most of any place in the world.  They come right up to you if you stand still by the feeders.  Flying jewels, that is what they are!


The view from the restaurant.  I loved it!


The trees were full of epiphytes. True rainforest style, indeed! It rained too, a lot.

The 'Big Cat' house was kind of sad.  They can't let these animals out in the wild, but they seem so lonely.  Here are the back feet of the jaguar, which was much lower and stronger than I expected.  I wonder if you hear the cats at night if you stay at the Peace Lodge...


The ozelot was not a lot bigger than our biggest house cat, but incredibly quick.  No way you could get a good photo of it.  But the paws are in focus, kind of! :)


And then, after passing the frog house, the farmer's house (and tasting fresh cheese), we hiked down towards the waterfalls into the rainforest... in the rain, of course.


The 120 feet (37 meter tall) waterfall, one of at least 4 waterfalls along the trail.  OK, OK, this is a little photoshopped in the colors because the low light in the rain made it an imperfect photo to begin with... please forgive me.


The rainforest in the rain... looking out over the valley.  I really, really want to come back here. And that time, I want to sit and look at hummingbirds for hours. They are truly amazing.

More photos from this place here.

Night Lights

The last night in Costa Rica I went up on the hotel roof, on the 5th floor, and looked out into the Central Valley around the city of San Jose.  It was so black, and with little dots of lights here and there.

Then I turned on the camera in night mode (very long exposure, no flash) and realized that you can make totally new images from a scene like that by fooling around a little bit.  So, here are some of my abstractions from that night.  (More photos like this here on Flickr.)

 

'masts'

 

 'flying east'

 

'lonely snake, away from the flock'

 

'sea horses'

Poa volcano in Costa Rica

Yesterday I went up at 2600 m elevation and stood on the rim of the crater of the Poa volcano in Costa Rica.  The crater is 1 km across and the volcano is still active, with the latest eruption in 2009, but not much activity yesterday.  Just some steam clouds (fumaroles) and smell of sulfur from down in the crater.  It didn't rain, which it usually does at this elevation, and the forest on the volcano are deep, low, dark cloud forest, with some open areas at the very highest elevations. It was a gorgeous place, easy to get to, and fascinating - the opposite to tropical beaches and tall rainforest.  Here are some photos, more to come on Flickr later...

 Looking into the crater of the Poa volcano in Costa Rica, with steamy sulfuric clouds coming out from the bottom.

 Walking through the cloud forest at 2600 m altitude.  Fog from clouds, gnarly trees, and lots of wet, green mosses.

 A high-altitude lake has formed in an older crater on the other side of the active crater rim.  The giant leaves in the foreground are Gunnera, or 'poor man's umbrella', and the leaves can be up to 2 meters (6 feet across).

A squirrel had figured out how to beg for food from the tourists and then took up dining space on a tree branch.

Ferns, ferns!  Small, large, enormous, green, and brown and curled up when young.

Costa Rica - a green place

I am back home after a week in Costa Rica, where I spent gorgeous times in rainforests, tropical beaches, mangrove swamps and star-filled nights.  Here are some of the things I saw at the La Selva Research Station, northeast of San Jose in the sloping foothills(click on photo for larger pictures):

The colorful bracts of Heliconias always fascinate me. The flowers are hidden inside, and only extend when they are flowering, a few at the time. Hummingbirds are the pollinators.



Lots of leaf-cutter ants, carrying leaves of the Costa Rican guava called 'cas', which makes great juice (the guava fruits, I mean!). These ants work 24 hours a day, so when you are out walking at night they are still there, toiling away in the dark. Their nests are in the ground, and they enter them through big openings. It is easy to find the nests since their trails are all cleared from any vegetation. The ants carrying the leaves are bigger, and then there are small ants sitting on the leaves, protecting the carrying ant from parasitic flies, which tries to lay its eggs in the head of the carrying ant. Evolution is really fascinating, indeed. Underground the leaves are then chewed and become part of big chewed-leaf-fungus gardens.



Two-toed sloth with a baby. These move really slow. A friend told me that once a sloth gripped his arm, and he thought he would loose his arm, the grip was that strong, and the sloth would not let loose. No wonder, if you spend your life in a tree, you better not fall down, ever.


The Montezuma oropendula birds (one of the weirdest birds I have seen, they sit and fall downwards on their branches on purpose; video here), are now making their nests at the tips of long palm-leaves. Poor chicks, they were being bounced around in the wind all the time. (I can't figure out if it should be oropendula or oropendola... both spellings are used.)

Palo Verde, Costa Rica

I already posted some about my recent trip to Costa Rica, but without photos, so here is some more of the story, with photos this time. Some of the text is the same, some is new.  Enjoy!

The limegreen painted concrete cinderblock walls are characteristic for the Palo Verde Research Station, which is run by OTS (Organization for Tropical Studies), a consortium that arranges classes for students in the tropics and research facilities for scientists.

The sunsets at Palo Verde are unbelievable beautiful.  The sun sets over the marshlands along the river Rio Tempisque, and as in all tropical countries the sun sets rather suddenly and you can see how it moves down the horizon and behind the bend of the earth.  

It is the dry season, but the marshlands still have water in them, enough to attract many ducks, herons, and other wetland birds.  For the birders, here are whistling ducks, roseate spoon bills, several kinds of white egrets, great blue herons, wood storks (crazy giant white birds), and many more.  Frogs in the millions, which you can hear but not see, and crocodiles you only see when they try to catch something and cause a splash.  It is a gorgeous place.

This morning I did I hike up on to the Mirador limestone hill, which is more like a tiny mountains.  The limestone is sharp-edged and has holes in it, so not really a nice thing to fall one, but sturdy to hold on to when you climb to the top.  I started in the early morning (8.30 AM), before it got too hot, so it was only maybe 27 degrees outside (Celsius that is, I guess 80 in Fahrenheit or so).

The dry season means that many trees have lost their leaves and are bare-branched temporarily, which makes it perfect for birdwatching.  I saw parrots (the screamiest bird in the forest!), woodpeckers, kingbirds, and a hummingbird.

After climbing the Mirador and looking at the fantastic view over the enormous river valley, with its snaking, meandering river on its way to the sea, I continued on the trail and ran into some other hikers from OTS.  They had just been watching two monkeys, two white-faced capuchins, try to catch a black and white owl.  I saw both the owl (flying away), and the monkeys who had given up the hunt and now were splayed like tired jaguars with their bodies and limbs draped across horizontal tree branches, high up in the trees.

In a little grove of evergreen trees we saw two long-tailed manakins, which look like small birds of paradise.  Imagine black velvet colored small birds, with bright turquoise colored sides and wings, and then the most intense scarlet red on the back of their neck.  And that is not enough!  From the tail, two special feathers have developed into two long lyre-shaped extensions.  Incredible.  They meet and have leks, like competitions between the males over who gets to mate with the females, and we saw one of these lek places, even if it was too late in the day for lek activities. 

My Costa Rica photos are here if you want to see more, and the most recent ones are towards the end of this photo set.

Book review: Malaria dreams by Stuart Stevens

You meet a friend you don't know so well in a bar. This friend tells you he has a Land Rover stuck in the Central African Republic, and wonders if you feel like going there and drive it back to Europe.  Sure you say, and manage to get another friend along for the adventure.  You go to CAR (Central African Republic) and the car is nowhere to be seen.  Three months later you manage to get to Europe, despite a million mechanical problems, African bureaucracy (which seems to be even worse than Central Asian bureaucracy), fun and unfun adventures, some malaria and dysentery, and not in the Land Rover.  And this is what happened.

This book, Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure by Stuart Stevens is a true story, and sort of like a diary of the way Africa works.  Things take time.  Creativity is a must. Italians are the best mechanics.  Don't trust the guides to take you to their home villages.  Insurance, what insurance?  Sleeping on the roof of a 4-wheel jeep under the stars - this is really Africa.

It is a great read, even if slow sometimes in the beginning, but this is a diary and there were many days of just waiting for something to happen.  The author, Stuart Stevens, have a great way with words and was one of the writers for our favorite TV series Northern Exposure.  I want to read more by him!  I am so amazed at their  persistence to actually do this trip, despite all the problems along the way.  Including a car that you can't turn off and that can only run in one gear, through Sahara.

Misty

(Wilson Botanical Garden, Costa Rica, after the rain... photo by LS)

Last day in Costa Rica it rained all afternoon, since apparently this is an El Nino year and that wreaks havoc of the dry season. The sun sets at 6 PM and right before sunset the dark clouds cleared up and a soft pink light covered everything in the misty fog. It was unreal, like fog machines on broadway, or religious paintings... The cicadas started their creaks and frogs their croaks, and noisy parrots flew here and there. But the light and the mist made it so peaceful and thoughtful. It reminded me of early summer mornings in Sweden when the low fog is dancing over the meadows, even if the sounds were totally different. Nature is an amazing thing.

Summer morning fog near Stockholm, Ekebyhovs alley, photo by Per Ola Wiberg:

Green things in Costa Rica

If you are small growing in a lawn, you better stand up for yourself. (A little legume weed.)

Screwpalms (Cyclanthaceae) have very strange flowers... They look more like half-eaten cobs of corn.
The leaves are used for Panama hats.

Passionately red lovely passion flowers. These were visited by small stingless bees.

During the dry season some tree ferns drop their eaves and
transform themselves into fuzzy knobbly walking sticks.


Rotten things can be beautiful. All that is left of this leaf is the cellulose fiber bundles along all the veins.


Heliconias look like they were designed by a pop artist.

More photos are on Flickr. Sorry, for some reason I can't change the font size to larger... it must be a bug in blogger.

Want some ants with that?

LA and I have spent the day exploring the area around Las Cruces Biological Station in Costa Rica, where we will stay for a few days. The day started very foggy, but eventually the sun dried up the forest. This is a moss in my hand, like a little branched fractal.
Before lunch we went on a short hike into primary (=old) and secondary (=not so old) rainforest down to Rio Java, which actually is not filled with coffee even if the name implies this. On the way we saw several trails of army ants, which I unsuccessfully tried to take great photos of. Oh well, I have some less than good, so still proof that they were there. Now they have moved on, probably. They are nearly blind and only care about getting to where they going, so they won't disturb you if you leave them alone.
We also saw a really cool green fly that had legs on stilts, and here is a photo of that for my Dad. I am having problems uploading my photos to Flickr, I think I have to be closer to the router here at the station to get better connection, but the blogging works. I'll try to get some photos up here, directly to the blog.
The funny thing with rainforests are that everything is green and it is hard to see anything. Few flowers, fruits, birds, insects, mammals... it is just green, and very dark. Photographing is a challenge. But I love rainforests, you never know what you will see. But it certainly is hard to see the plants for all the green, and so far we haven't found any of 'my plants'. We will keep looking.

There are birds everywhere. In the morning you hear a giant cacaphony of birds you can't see, but they certainly tell you that they are around. Then when the sun comes up, you see some, and many are so brightly colored that it looks like a Disney movie. Today we have seen Cherrie's tanager, euphonias (one was Swedish - blue on the back, yellow on the belly), golden-hooded tanager, blue-crowned motmot (guess how it sounds? yes, 'mot mot'), chestnut-mandibled toucans, green honeycreepers and others I haven't identified yet. I am skipping all little and big brown birds and concentrating on the colorful ones as you can see. I have photos of some of these with the Olympus camera and the telelens but I can't download them until I get home. So my own (slightly less) gorgeous bird photos will come later.

This is the dry season, so of course it is raining for some strange reason. Seems like the weather is off everywhere in the world. Minus 27 degrees Celsius in Stockholm and one meter of snow, a little warmer and wetter snow in NJ, and now rain here (and 20 degrees Celsius). It is raining right now (9 PM at night), but it was nice until 4 PM, so we got lots of time in the Wilson Botanical Garden in the afternoon. The garden is the center of the research station, and to get to the rainforest you have to hike 1 km and more away. There are hundreds of different kinds of gingers, palms, ferns, and many other plants here. Heliconias are great, I love their bright shapes. Butterflies are common too, many many species.

And finally food. It is served family style here, lots of dishes on a large table and you sit down and eat with others and chat nd have a great time. Every meal, breakfast included, includes rice and beans (sometimes mixed, sometimes separate, sometimes black beans, sometimes red or refried). Then add suitable accompanying dishes - breakfast was bacon, yogurt, fresh pineapple and papaya, bread and jam - lunch was two different kinds of salads (cabbage with cheese and a pasta salad), cooked zucchini and orange juice, so VB6 (=Vegetarian before 6 PM) - and dinner was panfried chicken, salad, and hearts of palm salad that was cooked, not from canned hearts of palms. Very good.

(sorry, no food pictures yet)

One of the people here had a giant jar of salsa for the table, about a foot high, with extremely spicy peppers inside. PP would have like it. I ate the salsa but put the pepper pieces aside after having one, it was enough endorphins for the meal. There was also extremely hot pickled peppers that were from the "Cerro del Muerte" (mountain of the dead), but the area isn't named from the peppers but from a dangerous road that goes through it. But I didn't even try those :)

My favorite condiment is a local Worchester-like hot pepper sauce named Lizano that they tell me exist in every house in Costa Rica. I will see if I can find a bottle and bring home. It is great, great. Wish all my friends and family could be here and see all the gorgeous things.