Poas & La Pas

The last time I visited the Poas Volcano (family Christmas vacation several years ago) it was shrouded in clouds.  This morning I arrived at the park the moment it opened and was rewarded for the effort with clear skies and a magnificent view of the steaming crater. As you will learn in a subsequent post, two of my three cameras were stolen and with them many photos from my first two days including some magnificent wide angle shots of the volcano. Fortunately, I still have a few telephoto shots taken with my third camera.

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As the clouds started to roll over the mountains, I made a beeline for the La Pas Waterfall Garden successfully beating the tourist buses coming from San Jose.  In addition to the magnificent falls (all photos lost), I was overwhelmed with the wildlife to be found in sanctuaries throughout the park. Thankfully, I did not lose my frog photos which were among my favorites of the visit. The frogs are contained in a large sanctuary in which they are free to roam.  For a small tip the frog minder was happy to show me where each of the species could be found.

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The variety of bird species which can be found in Costa Rica is amazing.  Here is but a small sample from day one.

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I lost all of my butterfly photos (hundreds) except for these two.

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My destination for the evening was the La Selva BIological Research Station.  I drove like a full blooded Costa Rican, which is to say, insanely fast, so that I would arrive before the 5pm registration cutoff.  I stopped only to photograph a group of white nose coati that were foraging by the side of the road.

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I arrived at La Selva just in time and dined with visiting students and resident researchers before going out on a solo night walk in the rain forest.  Other than being very scary, I was assured by the experts that there were really only two dangers to be concerned about, poisonous snakes and bullet ants.  Staying on the path and keeping it illuminated with a flashlight solves for snakes and not touching anything or sitting down solves for ants. Had I chickened out, I would have missed these photos of a two-toed sloth and her baby taken by the illumination of my flashlight.

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