Photographic Wonderland

We have settled in Costa Rica and are enjoying our longest stint yet as house sitters. It is comforting to establish a routine of sorts and have an idea of what you will be doing day to day. You are guaranteed amazing photographic opportunities and be assured that 5 or 6 evenings a week you are going to get a beautiful sunset.  However, the one thing that you cannot reliably predict here is the behaviour and frequency of visits from the animals that call this region home. It is also interesting to be able to come back to the region at a different time of year and notice that there is a change in the variety of animals that show up. The monkeys, squirrels, and grackles are consistent with our time here in November, however there are a selection of others that are new at this time of year. The first one I want to address is the crabs. Good Lord the crabs. These things are everywhere and are the most insane burrowers ever.

I have to mention the Basilisk, or Jesus Christ lizards (apparently they can run on water). We never saw these rather spastic fellows before, but they are very plentiful around the yard now, and in the house if they get the chance. We have seen them anywhere from 12 to 30cm (5 to 12 inches) in length. Unfortunately for them they currently seem to be the food of choice of everything else larger than them. We have seen iguanas, monkeys, grackles, and hawks chowing down on these fellows. In fact, if you look closely at the photos in this post you will notice that the monkeys have a body or a tail of a lizard in nearly every shot.

The blooming of the cashew tree in our front yard also brings the monkeys through to gorge on the cashew apples.

In addition to our regular birds like the Tanagers and the Grackles, we also have a lot of hawks flying through and keeping an eye on things.

Sorry, one more monkey, just because he is kind of cute.

Don’t be mislead though. It is not all relaxing and taking pictures. We continue to do yard work to keep the place looking tidy, though it truly amazes me the amount of debris you accumulate in such short periods of time.

What I love is the acceptable method for disposing of it all. The prepping of a good fire pit is hard work, but well worth it when it comes to clean up after the fire is done.

OK, I admit, it is a great opportunity for more photography.

One of the other things I have been enjoying immensely is the use of a proper tripod. I don’t know what I was thinking when we initially packed for this adventure, but not bringing a tripod was a mistake. Though I managed to get some great sunset and landscape shots before, with a proper tripod the scope has broadened immensely.

The truly wonderful thing about photographing sunsets here is there are lots of chances to do fun things with the photographs after, but the shots all by themselves are usually spectacular enough.

Life is good.