First, one set from the Disney cruise.
This is what it looks like to view the front landing gear of a 747 from about 30 feet directly beneath it.
This is from the boat's stop at St. Martin. There isn't much room for an airport and the landing strip for it starts literally 100 off a public beach. Most of the planes that come in are smaller but they get a couple 747's a day from Europe and we were well timed in our 15 minute stop on a cabbed round-the-island tour.
Here's a shot of that same plane a little bit farther out.
Now from Costa Rica.
A very large beetle used as a prop by a guy selling young coconuts outside a Del Monte banana processing plant on the way to our boat for getting to Tortugeuro (boat or plane is the only way to get there).
Our main reason for going to Tortuguero was to see the sea turtles (a surprise bonus was had on the cruise when a sea turle surfaces for air just a couple feet from me while snorkeling during our St. Thomas stop). They're significant to Lani and me for several reasons so we were really looking forward to seeing them. Unfortunately, the nesting season is pretty much over by the end of October so instead we had to settle for trying to catch a nest hatching (much lower certainty of successful timing). So it was a huge bonus to go out on that quest and come across a turtle laying her eggs a couple weeks late.
We escorted her back to the sea and then it was on to find the baby turtles.
Fortunately we were successful here as well. Here, the 150 or so eggs have all hatched but the turtles are still lethargic in the nest. They'll slowly get more active and finish breaking down the walls (the hole here is there doing, not ours) and make their break for the sea (much assisted by our presence keeping birds and other hunters away).
After about 45 minutes of observation they were on their way.
I escorted this one all the way to his successful entry into the ocean. I'll assume he is one of the very few that survived more than a little while in the ocean without falling prey to some aquatic predator.
Enough of turtles (though I could have happily spent all day walking them to from nest to ocean).
Also in the Torteguero area we saw (among many things I didn't get even mediocre photos of)
1. Enough red poison tree frogs to arm an ancient Indiana Jones treasure booby trap.
2. Leafcutter ants
3. A troop of howler monkeys (not the best photo I took of them but used because of baby presence).
4. Tree-climbing iguanas (these last two photos show how much trouble I had with lens fogging due to rain and humidity).
5. A surprisingly human looking three-toed sloth
6. And, of course, lots of jungle
We then hopped over to the Pacific coast on this, our new personal best for smallest airplane used. Soon we'll have to fly our own to get any smaller. When you're flying through clouds in one of these, you do find yourself wondering just how well the pilot knows where Costa Rica's 100+ volcanic peaks are.
On that coast we saw
1. A tiger-face crab while out in the mangrove swamp. Saw hundreds of land crabs out there but this species really stuck out.
2. A juvenile boa constricter resting in a tree. I was really hoping for some good snake sightings but this turned out to be the only one we saw all week. Closest thing to a disappointment on the trip.
3. Lots of "regular beach, not land" crabs at the beach.
4. Essentially our own private beach since we seemed to be the only guests in our section of the hotel (Hotel Arenas del Mar) where we were staying. Unfortunately, neither Lani nor I are the type get much use out of our own private beach.
5. Impressively large crocodiles. They are protected in Costa Rica and their population has rebounded on this river to around 200 per mile.
Of course, you saw one of the friendly troop of adolsescent capuchins above, here are others:
A. Bob
B. George
C. Steve
D. Achmed
So those are some of the highlights from our time in Costa Rica.
