Costa Rica

While much of the country has been besieged with snowstorms and below-average temperatures, it is summer in Costa Rica.

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While much of the body politic has been surround with snowstorm and below - average temperatures , it is summer in Costa Rica . I had the groovy fortune of a recent visit there – let these photos from eight degrees above the equator take you away for a speedy trip to the tropics !

Costa Rica , located in Central America , with Nicaragua to the due north and Panama to the Confederacy , the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east , is a nation of plenty . Although , we here in the Northern Hemisphere are fully swallow in wintertime , it is come on the end of summertime there . In fact , I buy environmentally favorable notebooks from the back - to - school displays there . Fascinating fauna and flora abound . There was so much to see and do , ten day scarce climatized me – I make love I will return .

Here , I want to share a bit of the vegetation and fauna , domain and sea . Since we have used SUPs before , we decided it would be fun to paddle in Costa Rica and we found a great twosome , Nego and Rachel , who own Pineapple Tours ( www.pineapplekayaktours.com ) in Dominical , who give tours on sup and kayaks . ( https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g313829-d2415249-Reviews-Pineapple_Kayak_Tours-Dominical_Province_of_Puntarenas.html ) They were so knowledgeable and well-disposed and patient with all of my question about the plant . It was so exciting to paddle through the mangrove – we saw four different variety : cherry-red , black , white , and afternoon tea . It was darker once in amongst the mangroves since their canopy did n’t lease as much sunlight through and there were all kinds of little crab louse scurrying up and down the Brobdingnagian root word systems . I found the movements of the crabs like big spiders a bit creepy – just did n’t want them jumping like some of the spiders do there .

The birds we saw were amazing and Nego not only do it them by their coming into court – he recognize most of them by their song : snowy egrets , sandpiper , black - throated stills , mangrove hummingbird , Phalacrocorax carbo , frigatebirds , 3 kinds of kingfisher , hawks , vultures and five different herons : large dismal , little blue , green , yellow - crowned nighttime heron , and my favorite was the bare - throated tiger heron , which had a mottled tan and russet brown chest and a wing span of about six fundament !

We cease on a sandlike beach which was out in the sunlight and I saw plants that I recognized from back at domicile . There were Job ’s tear with bowed stringed instrument of seeds , castor noggin plants and a few leguminous plants that looked like vetch . When we paddled back to the beach , Nego serve us fresh - cut papaya , mango , pineapple and watermelon on a fiddling table under an umbrella – the consummate way to finish the head trip .

On the agency out of the park , we stopped so I could shoot the strangler tree common fig tree and Mangifera indica tree . I can not start to traverse all of the plant in this one web log so I shall have to write another blog for show you the Central Valley with the vegetable market , and the spice and herb farm .

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A view from my cousin’scasita, in southwest Costa Rica–looking out overla jungla–to the Pacific Ocean.Click on other pix to enlarge and read captions.Photo/Illustration: Susan Belsinger