Less than 15 hours since our last match we faced our second team from Iceland this morning. The game ended in a 3-3 tie.  Let’s just say that the referee had a special place in his heart for his fellow countrymen. That said, a tie made it that much easier to socialize with our hosts after the match.  Originally, our game had been scheduled for the afternoon but we agreed to move it up earlier so that everyone could attend the huge Gay Pride Parade and Festival scheduled for later in the day.  Pictured below is the newly elected President of Iceland, the first sitting president of any country to address a Gay Pride event.

The parade featured performance artists, drag queens, and straight performers.  I literally had a front row seat to the stage show and was able to get some nice close ups of the performers.

Our last dinner in Iceland was a fine feast where we were joined by several members of the team we played earlier in the day.

The motivation for my trip to Iceland is to compete with my over-50 soccer team, Concord United, in two matches against senior teams from Iceland.  Our first match was this evening and ended in a 1-1 tie.  Teams here take some liberties with age and I was surprised to be marking a 42 year old Icelandic giant.  Even so, I did my job well and deprived him of any productive trips down the pitch despite his 15 year advantage.

I spent the morning on an organized walking tour of the capital with a small group of my teammates and captured many new sights.

During my last visit to Iceland I had to rush around the Snæfellsnes peninsula because I was running short on time.  Today, I revisited all of my favorite locations giving myself plenty of time to explore. These types of images do not lend themselves to viewing in small format.  Clicking on them should bring up a larger, higher resolution version.  I had originally planned a third night of camping but opted to travel on to Reykjavik when it began to rain.

I shot mostly landscapes today but I couldn’t resist these little ducklings.

It is important to have a full tank of gas and carry your own food and water in the Westfjords as you can drive for hours before encountering any services. So provisioned, I set out to explore, beginning with the western most point of the the country, the cliffs at Látrabjarg.  On the way I stopped frequently, as photo opportunities popped up at every turn including some rather unlikely subjects.

Most of the roads in this area are made of gravel.  Frequent rock slides and ever enlarging potholes make constant work for maintenance crews.  Because the roads are very narrow, you simply have to queue up and wait until the work is completed before driving on.

Látrabjarg is home to hundreds of thousands of cliff dwelling birds (it has the largest colony in all of Europe) including the ever so cute puffin.  I arrived at noon when most birds are off at sea fishing but I did manage to find some nice subjects to shoot. I followed posted advice to lay flat on my belly when taking photographs from the cliff edge. Extremely high wind gusts have carried many a visitor over the edge (check out the person in the photo below for a sense of scale and to gauge the probability of surviving a fall). Had it not started to rain, I could have spent hours here.

The beach at Rauðasandur (red sands) is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen and not a single footprint on it. Aside from being extremely remote, I would venture to guess that few humans would find the water temperature to their liking. The seals, however, seemed to like it just fine.

By late afternoon I was ready to make my way towards Grundarfjörður on the Snæfellsnes peninsula. I plan to camp there near Kirkjufell Mountain which I hope to photograph tomorrow morning. In total I spent another 6 hours driving today and welcomed all the stops I made to take photographs along the way.

I have never been able to sleep on a red-eye and such was the case last night. My excitement at being back in Iceland, however, was enough to keep me awake as I made the 6 hour drive to Dynjandi located in the Westfjords, the only region of the country that I did not reach on my prior visit. Fewer than 15% of visitors to Iceland ever set foot in the Westfjords and a surprisingly large number of Icelanders have never been here either.  It is by far the most pristine and some would say the most authentic experience of the country since the massive increase in tourism over the past few years.

Dynjandi is a series of waterfalls with a cumulative drop of 330 feet. The way the water fans out so uniformly makes it one of the most photogenic I have captured.

I made few stops en route to Dynjandi but paused for the ones shown below. A loyal follower of this blog requested more photos of bridges so I was on the lookout for good examples. I would say that 90% of the bridges in the country are one-lane affairs.

When the sun finally set at about 10:30PM, sleep came easily. I pitched my tent at the base of the falls where the thundering sound of falling water ushered in the best night’s sleep I have had in some time.

Jeanine spent the weekend in Stony Brook visiting Maya who is interning at the Brookhaven National Labs. Her visit was timed to overlap with the BNL Atom Smashing Fun Day during which members of the public get a behind-the-scenes tour of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and learn about the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle.

I bid farewell to Costa Rica departing my hotel at3:30 amm, flew to Miami and then Boston where Jeanine met me for a short time. She delivered a replacement camera I ordered earlier in the week and we caught up on the prior 10 days before I boarded a red-eye for Iceland where I will spend the next week.

By a margin of 6-0, the US defeated Costa Rica to secure third place at the 2016 Copa International Futbol Amputados, the teams highest ever tournament finish. There were a lot of hugs going around. Head Coach Lambert embraces Nico after his second of three goals in the match, a beautiful direct kick which he bent around the wall and placed in the upper corner. Nico kisses teammate, Foday, after he scores his first goal of the tournament.  I hoist the US team MVP with a total of 5 goals and 4 assists while he hoists the team’s third place trophy.

Professional television coverage of the game can be viewed at the following link.

USA vs. Costa Rica Television Coverage

 

The US fell to Mexico 2-0 this afternoon in a disappointing semi-finals loss. Mexico went up 1-0 on an own goal (one of our defenders tried to head a corner kick out of the box but only managed to deflect it past our keeper).  When one of our top players was ejected early in the second  half on a call that was universally viewed as incorrect, the US, playing a man short, had little chance of holding back Mexico. With only 6 field players, losing one is a major disadvantage.

Nicolai played well, as did the entire squad. He finished the game entirely spent and with an injured ankle. His availability for tomorrow’s consolation finals remains in question.

Although I arrived early for some photography, my main purpose for visiting Costa Rica was to watch Nicolai compete for the US National Amputee Soccer Team in a 6 team mini-Copa Americas Cup tournament.  The teams opening match was against Costa Rica.  Nico scored two goals and had one assist in the 3-0 US victory. The match was streamed live and Jeanine had a virtual viewing party with several relatives and friends.  Earlier in the day the team was treated to a tour of the brand new Stadium Nationale where I took this photo of him with Karuna. I have given the couple their celebrity nikname of Nicuna. Nicolai offered Karico as another option. We will have to see which one sticks. Without my good cameras, stolen earlier in the week, it was impossible to get decent photos of the evening game played under the lights. Tomorrow the team faces a very strong Mexican squad during the day and I hope to get some action shots with my back up camera.

I got up very early this morning and returned to the same location where I photographed the Resplendent Quetzal yesterday. Not only did he show up for me, he struck a very photogenic pose. At 5:45am I joined my birding partners from yesterday for an outstanding morning of photography including a second Quetzal. After breakfast I began driving to the Irazu Volcano hoping to match some of the fantastic shots I got at the Poas Volcano which were lost with my stolen cameras. When I stopped for lunch in Cartago I had a chance to do some online research about the volcano only to discover that the emerald green lake pictured in all the photos I have seen is no longer present. Learning this and seeing that the mountains were already under the clouds, I opted to head into downtown San Jose to visit the famed National Theater House.  Having managed, against considerable odds, to avoid damaging my rental car for which I had waived all insurance coverage, I decided not to press my luck driving around the city and returned it early. I met Nico and Karuna at the airport and we took a taxi to the very posh Windham Herradura where we met up with the US National Amputee Soccer contingent that is being hosted here by the Costa Rican team.

 

News that my brother is making good progress on the road to recovery from his stroke lifted my spirits as did the opportunity to photograph another Resplendent Quetzal this morning. The quality of all  photos for the remainder of my trip will be short of what I could have done with my high end gear but I am trying to make the best of the situation. I met a wonderful birding guide who invited me to join his tour after learning of my misfortune and restoring much of my faith in the kindness of the Costa Rican people. He was guiding a lovely couple from Texas with whom I became friends and joined for dinner after spending several hours in a magnificent orchard/garden which offered amazing bird life and views of the mountains shrouded in clouds.

Last night I received word from Jeanine that my younger brother, Mark, suffered a stroke.  Fortunately, he was immediately treated with TPA which cleared the clot. Initial reports indicate that he suffered no physical impairments although he is having some issues with speech and memory. With little I can do from Costa Rica, I choose to believe he will make a complete recovery. I know his amazing wife and kids will do everything humanly possible to make that happen as will our entire extended family.

Perhaps my mind was preoccupied with concerns over my brother or maybe it was my high regard for the friendliness of the Costa Rican people but I let my guard down today and it cost me dearly. While continuing to make my way down the Pacific coast towards Quepos, where I thought I would make a brief visit to the Manuel Antonio National Park, I fell victim to a well honed criminal enterprise that liberated me of $10K worth of camera gear. Worst of all, I lost 90% of the photographs I had captured since arriving in the country which has left me more depressed than I can describe.

I was able to reverse engineer the crime based on all the evidence I discovered after the fact. The theft was perpetrated by a three man crew that targeted me at some point during my travels when they observed me taking photos with my high end gear. They followed me in their car until I stopped again. One of them then stabbed my driver’s side rear tire with a small Exacto blade (see photo above of the actual blade). They then continued to follow me until my tire eventually went flat. When it did, they drove a few hundred meters past me where the driver let the other two out. One of them came walking by nonchalantly and offered to help me change the tire. I was doing fine by myself but he was very insistent and I did not want to be rude. He spoke no English and we struggled to communicate. While I was jacking the car up, he was removing the spare tire from the back hatch of the 4×4 rental.  He was making a lot of noise and banging the car around a lot. He did this to distract me as the second guy snuck around and approached the passenger side front door where he quietly gathered two of my three cameras and walked away. Once he made it back to their car the guy that was helping me just walked away and down the road to join his buddies. I did not even notice the cameras were gone until I was ready to start driving again. The reason I know all this is because the whole thing was caught on a security video from a store across the street and the guy who repaired the damaged tire gave me the Exacto blade.

I spent the next several hours with the police before making my way back into the mountains to my next destination in the cloud forest of San Geraldo de Dota.   Fortunately my camera equipment is well insured and the thieves had no appetite for my low cost travel camera leaving me something to continue shooting with.

Rising early this morning I had the beach to myself and enjoyed a nice walk along its full extent. The last time I was in Costa Rica I had the good fortune to photograph a pair of Scarlet Macaws, albeit with a low resolution camera.  Today I decided to return to the same area, just north of the Manuel Antonio national park, in hopes of doing so again.  As I began the three hour drive, I passed through a small town and noticed several children wearing traditional costumes and being accompanied by their parents to school. I decided to stop and attend what turned out to be a colorful performance in celebration of the Anexion del Partido de Nicoya, a local holiday.

When I reached the Tarcoles River, I paused to visit the crocodiles that can be found sunning themselves on the banks at midday.  Although I found many other great birds while searching up and down the coast, the macaws continue to elude me.  My best images of the crocodiles and all the birds I shot today were lost.

Based on research I did last night, I have opted to go to Curi Changa in lieu of Monteverde today.  Located a few miles apart, Curi Changa is a better bet for spotting the very hard to find Resplendent Quetzal.  My bet paid off and I was able to capture images of both the male and female.  The guides in the park use radios to communicate sightings with each other greatly increasing the odds of locating rare birds.  Our guide located the female but had no luck with the male.  When the call came in for a male sighting we literally started running to the new location.  15 pounds of camera equipment and the high altitude did not make keeping up easy, but the reward was well worth the effort.  Regrettably, all my images from Curi Changa were lost with my cameras.

Quite exhausted from the last several days I decided to head for Playa Carrillo for some relaxation on the beach to end the day. The water could not have been more soothing to my very tired muscles.

I remained on the beach to watch the sun set. When it did, hundreds of Phantom Crabs began marching to the ocean from their daytime homes in low lying areas on the other side of the local access road. I estimate that 50 percent are killed under the tires of departing beach goers who are leaving at exactly the same time.  There are so many it is almost impossible not to hit one. I drove slowly and claimed no victims.