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    February 3, 2010
 

Beach time in Playa Guiones

Playa Guiones is west of Nosara, Costa Rica on the west coast. The surf is amazing - it has about 2 miles of flat beach to walk, and goes out for hundreds of yards with flat sand when the surf goes out. It's a surfing mecca.

We stayed at this great place called the Harmony Hotel, an eco-lodge with really great organic food. All their hot water is heated by solar energy, they recycle, and have a fresh juice bar and yoga classes! http://www.harmonynosara.com/


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posted by Sue  # 8:11 PM 0 Comments
February 2, 2010
 

Pure Dolphin Joy!

Why do dolphins jump? Scientists disagree, but theories are: to travel faster than they can in the water, to get a birds eye view of where the food is, to get rid of parasites, or to play.

This dolphin had the boat oooing and ahhhing. He jumped up about 30 feet in the air. If you look closely, he's grinning.
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posted by Sue  # 10:01 AM 0 Comments
 

Life expectancy and bananas

Jack & Karen Haggerty (one of Mike's flying buddies) have a lovely home in Potrero, in NW Costa Rica. Seems like a great way to spend at least part of retirement! Life expectancy is good here, about 79 years - slightly better than in the US. The #1 place for life expectancy? Macau. And we won't be planning any trips to Angola, which came in #224 on the list.

In Jack & Karen's yard was a PERFECT banana tree. I've seen bananas growing upside down before, but I had never seen the flower pod, hanging at the bottom. It was very heavy, full of soon-to-be bananas.



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posted by Sue  # 9:42 AM 0 Comments
January 27, 2010
 

Real Toucans in the wild!

Fruit loops will never be the same. These toucans were magnificent.

For a trip down memory lane: the original Fruit Loops commercial from 1975.
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posted by Sue  # 1:11 PM 0 Comments
 

Manuel Antonio Bugs & Snakes

Things we would have walked by and never seen, had our guide not pointed them out and put the scope on them....

Dragonfly, boa constrictor (we were about a foot away), and a 4 inch long grasshopper.


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posted by Sue  # 1:01 PM 0 Comments
 

Manuel Antonio National Park Nature Porn

Manuel Antonio is the crown jewel of Costa Rican National Parks, a tiny park with only about a one mile trail through the jungle. You hire a guide at the entrance, and they have telescopes which they carry and set up whenever an animal or insect is spotted. These are things that you would almost NEVER be able to see with the naked eye. You could walk through the park by yourself and not see a thing. The jungle is amazingly dense with seemingly invisible life, until they point out a sloth here, or a monkey there. We got some great photos by putting our camera up to the telescope lense.

Our squirrel monkey observation here? What our guide called "nature porn".

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posted by Sue  # 12:56 PM 0 Comments
January 26, 2010
 

Native sloths

The three toed sloth and the five toed sloth. Takes a sharp eye to tell which is which, look closely!
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posted by Sue  # 8:08 PM 0 Comments
 

What a day

We were greeted in the morning by a flat tire in the parking lot. The attendant (with Spanglish and lots of sign language) helped us put on the spare and directed us to a gas station so we could get our tire repaired. Too bad it went flat again 20 minutes later, on a hilly gravel road. We trashed that tire in the process of driving to a flat area. We then spent the morning going to 4 different places to buy a new tire (tiene llanta nueva, por favor?), but no one had the right size. We drove the rest of the day with no spare on very sketchy dirt roads.

Came upon a bridge where everyone stopped to look at crocodiles. HUGE... 19 on one side of the bridge and 17 on the other side. With a skimpy walkway, damaged guardrail and traffic whizzing by. (Pick your poison: get hit by a car, or eaten by a crocodile?)


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posted by Sue  # 8:05 PM 0 Comments
January 24, 2010
 

Conchal Beach, Costa Rica

Conchal Beach or Playa Conchal doesn't actually have sand. In one of Mother Nature's bizzare twists, the beach is made up of millions of seashells (conchas), partially broken but definitely not sand yet. Made for very clear water, and was quite comfy to walk on.
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posted by Sue  # 7:57 PM 0 Comments
 

Leaf Cutter Ants Working Hard

Leaf cutter ant facts:
They have powerful jaws that vibrate up to 1000 times per second.

They can lift over 20 times their body weight (that's the same as one human lifting a TON).

They don't eat the leaves. They compost them back at the nest to grow yummy fungus, which they eat.

Each colony of 3 to 8 million leaf cutter ants will move about 20 tons of soil in its lifetime.

And you think YOU work hard, huh?!
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posted by Sue  # 7:40 PM 0 Comments