It's high time the images from Costa Rica made it to the interweb. Therefore, I give you
COSTA RICA: SOME PICTURES I DID NOT TAKE AND LINKS TO SOME I DID
I am posting these pictures, which are mostly group photos and photos that include me, which were taken by a variety of other participants in our Central American venture. My reasoning here is simply that some other people got some decent shots that captured what our life was like there. If you want to see photographs that I took you have three choices:
- Album on Facebook Vol. I (Snapshots) (click on the pictures to read the descriptions)
- Album on Facebook Vol. II (Less of snapshots)
- My Flickr account
So here. 41 photographs from the neotropics.
This is our first night (first ten minutes) at the QERC, in the bedroom. I'm resenting the fact that it's not bedtime yet.
Julian and Javier, two boys from the valley. Very fine young men.
On our first hike to the waterfall, I stepped in a hole. It was surprising.
Our spring break trip to Manuel Antonio. Someone cleverly took a picture of me sleeping. At least my mouth is closed.
Our hostel in San Jose. The hostels usually had little community rooms where you could watch TV or read or sleep and have offensive B.O. (as one man was doing, just out of the frame).
Manuel Antonio and its many vendors.
Playing cards after a long day of Spring Breaking. Note the sunburn.
Playing cards one night, in pajamas, apparently, at the QERC. The desks in the background are where we spent a painful amount of time, studying and researching and being studious.
After a game of High Elevation Ultimate Frisbee
This is Colin on the balcony that wraps around the QERC. Eventually we put up a hammock out there and I had some good cold night sleep out there.
On top of Cerro de la Muerte... So, so cold.
In the cloud forrest (which is rain forrest in the mountains, basically) in San Gerardo. This was one of our group hikes. I am taking a picture with my alarmingly red backpack, which is featured in many of the photographs below. It's like a Where's Waldo. But easy. And not as interesting.
Eating sugar cane on a coffee farm. This place was literally minutes from the Panama border. It was our first stop on our grand tour of Costa Rica, for the portion of our studies called Tropical Ecology and Sustainability.
On our bus, which we rode to our main stops. The Tropical Ecology and Sustainability course took us to Las Cruces Biological Station (near San Vito, near Panama), Sierpe on the Osa Peninsula (where we caught a boat to Campanario, then a boat to Sirena in Corcovado National Park, then a boat back to Sierpe), San Jose, Ostional (where sea turtles go by the millions to lay their eggs), and finally Rincon de la Vieja, which is up near(ish) the Nicaraguan border.
On the boat ride to Campanario, we stopped to climb on the mangrove roots.
I am over in the corner there, feeling sad that it was time to get back on the boat. Climbing on mangroves is on my top ten (maybe top five) things from Costa Rica.
Getting back on the boat.
One day while we were on the Osa Peninsula, we took a boat out to an island and did some hiking and snorkeling. We ate lunch on an abandoned boat. Ashley and Kevin got jellyfish stings, Meredith got bitten by a snake (constrictor... not venomous) and I (and two or three others) swam after a giant sea turtle.
This is Campanario, the research station where we stayed for a few nights. We had to access it by boats. Such good hikes around it, and such good waves in front of it.
Two nights while we were at Campanario, we went bat catching. This is one that we caught.
Upstairs at Campanario. Colin and I were doing homework, but if you zoom in very, very close, you'll notice that we're both asleep. Also, the lighting here is misleading. It was extraordinarily dark there, as we only used candles for light at night time. I loved it a lot.
On one of our hikes on the Osa Peninsula. We ate lunch by a waterfall. Then we jumped in to the waterfall and cooled off before hiking some more. We hiked all day.
After swimming, before heading back out on the trails.
This is our host family's backyard at Ostional. This is only a few minutes after we arrived, and I don't know why I look so irritated. It's very likely that someone just said something that exasperated me. The girl on the far left is part of our host family.
After a long day's work at Casa del Sol, the fully solar energized farm where we worked for a day. We made giant compost piles and ate the best mangos. Notice Meredith hoarding some of said mangos.
This is one of two tapirs we saw. They're endangered, and this one is wearing a collar because he's being studied or tracked or researched, due to his endangerment.
One of so many monkeys we saw. I think this is a howler monkey. Howler monkeys are my favorite monkeys (one of four species we saw). They bark/roar like possessed dinosaurs.
Rincon de la Vieja, our final stop. This is the volcano we climbed. We started from further back than this picture started. It was a rough hike.
On the way up the volcano, we stopped to refill our water bottles at this cold spring. Good water. I am busy telling Stephen that he is going to fall in and get our water all dirty. Seconds after this picture was taken, Stephen was all wet and we had to move upstream a little to avoid the Stephen water.
Red backpacked Jori, climbing away.
That's Sarah and me from very, very far away.
On the way back down, I think. I am trying to blend in with the rocks.
A hot spring near the volcano.
I liked this dog a lot. Her name was Pantera, and she belonged to a kid who wore black spiderman pajamas all of the time, who was the son of the guy in charge of this particular station.
Me sleepin. This was our room at the station at Rincon de la Vieja.
Such a good spring. I am hiding under the waterfall there. To access this little spring, we had to hike for a while (and this particular day I had to use the forrest as a dressing room. At least I took my suit with me), then follow the spring's stream several meters back through a gorge, then there was this spring and waterfalls. What isn't pictured, though, due to dangerous camera terrain, is what is far out of the frame. Some of us climbed up this waterfall into another little pool, where there was another waterfall. Even fewer of us climbed that waterfall and followed the gorge further back (about a ten minute walk) to a completely hidden, completely beautiful tall waterfall and pool. We didn't climb that one, because of its massive height. But it was so, so beautiful. I wish I had a camera that could have survived the journey.
In San Jose. Hello Central America, goodbye United States.
In David and Sarah's apartment back at the QERC, teaching English lessons.
Julian and Javier after a successful English lesson.
Our last day in San Jose. Probably the best trip to San Jose, too. It was a very good, relaxing, calm before the storm goodbye to Costa Rica. As soon as our plane returned to the U.S., I had so many things to do before I could graduate. Including a rough dissection.
Our whole group on the last night. We ate cake and watched Arrested Development. And I got to hold a snake (which is probably too small to be seen here). It was good.
THE END
