Corcovado

 It occurs that we have been covering Costa Rican people and animals pretty well, but haven't been giving enough attention to the landscapes and scenery which were also so stunning. To rectify that, here is a selection of photos which showcase what an incredible park Corcovado is. The picture below was taken beside a stream where we stopped to have lunch during our all-day hike in the area and hopefully helps show what a slice of paradise the whole area is.

 I have struggled for years to take compelling photographs of forests. The locations themselves are always amazing, but my pictures have previously never come away with anything that helps capture the scope or majesty of an area. While I still have much to learn, and large steps yet to take, I do find that a fisheye lens really helps capture the scale of these places, as it does below looking through the foliage and out onto the beach.

 Going over the top with fisheyes of course, the logical conclusion is another little planet, which you can click to enlarge if you like. This was our morning hike from where our driver dropped us off along several kilometers of unoccupied beach to the park gates. Mario was very keen on getting us there early, so the only others on that path at that time of day were a donkey and his driver doing a luggage delivery from one of the lodges in the park.

Pre-Columbian Gold Museum

 San Jose has a handful of very nice museums, one of which is dedicated entirely to gold artifacts and crafting techniques of the people who lived in the country prior to the arrival of Columbus. Since all the pieces on display are small and priceless, the museum is sensibly built in a giant vault. The same area also had a great display on the history of money in Costa Rica, but doesn't photograph as well since its all either text or notes on display.

 One thing I found very fascinating about all the native art we saw in Costa Rica is just how different a style everything was. This should not really be any surprise given the artists had a completely different culture and understanding from my own, but all their artwork has a striking and alien quality to it. These artisans used the "lost wax method" where they would carve their piece out of wax, surround it in clay, then melt out the wax and use the impression it left behind to cast their piece. Given the detail of all the pieces and the difficulty (so I read) of working in molten gold, the final results are still stunning hundreds of years later.

 Early indigenous people were fascinated by jaguars, vultures, crocodiles, frogs, and a variety of imaginary gods and creatures, and this was clearly reflected in their art. My inner Englishman was particularly taken with this golden shrimp which reminded me of lobstering off the Northumberland coast.

Iguana Identities

 We've had quite a few trips to the tropics (Mexico and Galapagos both) which had a few endemic species of iguanas, and Costa Rica was no slouch in this department either. As explained previously, Costa Rica has very diverse coasts which have been separated by mountains for quite some time, allowing for very different animals in different parts of the country. To begin, green iguanas like the one below, were a common sight in treetops on the Caribbean coast along many of the streams and rivers we visited. Fun facts: at 2m, they are the largest lizards in the country, the adults only go to ground to lay their eggs, and they are vegetarian AND would be unable to digest plants without symbiotic flora in their guts.

 At the smaller end of the spectrum, this helmeted iguana (the only one we saw) would cap out at 36cm in length and could theoretically be found on either coast. Fun fact: they apparently can be so stationary in their wait to ambush prey that small plants are known to grow on their heads as they wait. THAT is dedication to your means of hunting.

 Rounding out the set, spiny-tailed iguanas are found only on the pacific coast and have an in-betweeny length of around 130cm. They are the most sexually dimorphic of the three, with the females being almost entirely black and without the long crests of the male shown below. Fun fact: the males court females with a bizarre head-bobbing routine which we saw briefly from this individual and will hopefully be able to highlight in our video.

Quetzal spotting for fun and profit

 One bird we were very keen to see in Costa Rica was the Resplendent Quetzal, famed for its incredibly long tail feathers. They like to live high in the mountains and cloud forests where they eat a variety of berries. We had no luck spotting them on Monteverde, but on the last day of our tour, Mario took us on an alternate route back to San Jose which took us through a different range of their territory. Below is the female quetzal we saw first. She was quite close and made us think seeing the male would be easy.

 There is a collective of farmers and naturalists in the highlands who run a sightings network to help tourists see the quetzal. For $10 per person you are allowed on their land to look for it yourself, and for $30 per person they will make sure you spot it. We were tight for time, so we chose the more expensive option with a few people to ensure we could find it. This decision was worth every penny as the local guides were very good at what they do, and because there's a male quetzal in the picture below, but you'd never know it.

 After skulking around in dense foliage for 20 minutes or so, the male flew out and posed beautifully for us in direct sunlight, showing just how striking a bird it really is. The tail feathers of the male are several times the body length of the bird and they are stunning animals. After a few minutes of an amazing view the male and his two females flew away into the unknown forest.

Howler Monkeys

 Howler monkeys were the first of four species of monkeys we saw in Costa Rica. While we were fortunate enough to see them several times, they are very dark in color and almost always moving quickly about in the forest canopy against a bright sky. This makes them a bit of a nightmare to photograph since they are tricky for both exposure AND focus, but we got a nice handful of pictures of them. The picture below may appear that we are on the same level, but it was actually peering down towards us from the canopy.

 They earn the "howler" part of their name with a very distinctive call. Every time I hear it, I wonder what it must have been like to be the first people hearing it, not knowing it was a 7kg monkey but thinking it was some enormous forest demon. They often start calling early in the morning and the sound carries for miles across the countryside.

 Like all monkeys, gravity is simply someone else's problem rather than a constraint on their daily lives. In Cahuita we saw a troop moving through the trees, which included a 30-foot vertical leap between branches. This same leap was also done by a mother with a baby clinging to its back, so they certainly learn how to get around from an early age.

Cloudy with a Chance of Volcanoes

Since we had a bit of trouble spotting Arenal due to clouds during our tour, we tacked on a day trip out of San Jose in our last few days in the country to try and take in Poas Volcano. On the drive up we were warned that the weather was variable up there and that it was typically visible but frequently obscured by clouds. With that in mind, you can imagine we weren't too thrilled when we were greeted with the view below.

Somewhat frustrated, we took to the hiking trails in the area. There are 2 craters at the site, one of which is a 15 minute walk through some very foreboding and dark forest. When we arrived at the second lookout, we were initially greeted with a view identical to the first picture. However, we decided to stick it out since our tour was on location for 1.5 hours and hope for the best. Not more than 10 minutes later, the wind shifted and the clouds pulled back, revealing a stunning lake of collected rainwater which has filled in an old crater.

Excited by this change for the better, we enjoyed the view and then hurried back down the path to the first location, to be gladly greeted with the view shown below. We still had 40 minutes or so to enjoy the view and take all the pictures we wanted before heading back to the bus. Strangely enough, the winds shifted again shortly before we started our walk back, and before we left the clouds had completely returned and obscured the area altogether.

Unexpected High-Altitude Nocturnal Mammals of the Caribbean

 The title of this post might sound overly specific, but Cahuita was crawling with strange mammals late at night. Starting off, the kinkajou is not only a catching tune from 1927 but also a strange raccoon variant, because Costa Rica LOVES weird variations of raccoons. They are solitary and shy with a prehensile tail to move around in the tops of trees. This was the only one we saw, but the species was high on my list so I was glad for the chance.

 Literally 15 minutes before the kinkajou and even in the exact same tree we also saw this common opossum. They ALSO like to climb trees at night with their prehensile tails. While conventional lore tells you that opossums will play dead when in danger, our guidebook says that this species elects to twirl around spraying feces when threatened, so bring a zoom lens and don't try to get too close!

 We talked about sloths just a few weeks ago, but I thought this picture was a nice addition to round out the set. Although we only saw the one, it is not uncommon to see sloths moving about on the powerlines of Costa Rica, and so long as they only touch one at a time they do just fine (the same way birds can perch without danger). The problem comes if they switch from one line to another at a post and suddenly become an unexpected conductor. Sloths are surprisingly resilient and often survive such a shock (there are several rescues that take in electrocuted sloths) but it can't be good for them overall and many are killed each year from this unfortunate situation.