M-Photo | Field Notes

Exploration Day!  We took an amazing river safari on the Rio Frio in Los Chiles.  We started spotting wildlife as soon as we launched from the pier.  I was so hoping for more accessible wildlife to shoot, we have been taking nature walks and they were great but it tough to shoot in low light.  The jungles are dark and spotting wildlife without a nature guide is almost impossible, well, for me any way.  Back home I can spot antelope in Wyoming likes it nobody's business, but sloths in trees, not so much.  I don't know how Liza, our guide, could even distinguish that the dark ball of fur, that looked like a clump of moss high in the tree, was a sloth.  After some practice and knowing what to look for you can start to see birds and lizards, but I never spotted a sloth up in the trees on my own. Camera: Fuji XT3 I did see actually see a sloth  that did not look like a giant ball of moss at Manuel Antonio park.

Costa Rica is known for its Eco Lodges, volcanos, zip lining and wildlife.  We also saw a lot of art on this trip.  We started our trip in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, visiting the Central Park and the National Theater.  There was art every where! A pedestrian street flanked by government buildings lead us to the the Central Park of San Jose.  As we reached the park, Erich and I spotted the same sculpture at the same time...what is that over there?  We waited impatiently for the tour guide to let us free and we made a beeline to the three men coming up out of the ground. Over by the National Theater were more sculptures.  They were really cool, made by the artist Jimenez Deredia.   His sculptures were sprinkled throughout the city center of San Jose.  https://deredia.com/en/   Further down the shopping district was this colorful building... On our last night in Santa Ana, a sub...

"Pura Vida" is the official saying of Costa Rica and basically means "It's all good". We spent two weeks touring the country from the city of San Jose traveling to rain forests, dry forests, cloud forests, transitional forests, with hiking, zip lining, rafting, wildlife viewing and collecting bug bites! This was  a different trip for us in that it was more about the nature and wildlife than the archeological sites or UNESCO sites we are typically drawn to. We wanted to do a short trip overseas this year and 10 days in Costa Rica was perfect! I was eaten alive by bugs, I would say mosquitos but I am not entirely sure the bites I received were solely from mosquitos.  I think there were chigger bites mixed in with mosquitos and maybe some other flying biters.  I think I got the bulk of them in Sarapiqui when we took that evening hike to the burial grounds.  Yeah, I used bug spray, but I guess I am just too tasty. Shot with my iPhone. I am sure this is whe...

Old yellow school buses shine like never before in Central America - the Chicken Bus. These are privately owned bus companies with fierce competition for customers. They are decorated and painted to lure the would be rider to choose their bus rather than another. They are known for driving fast on the mountain roads, the faster the better - faster means more riders!

Lake Atitlan is surrounded by many villages, in which Maya culture is still prevalent and traditional dress is worn. The Maya people of Atitlán are predominantly Tz'utujil and Kaqchikel. The Maya weave textiles and each group has their own pattern. Santiago Atitlán is the largest of the lakeside communities, and is noted for its worship of Maximón, an idol formed by the fusion of traditional Mayan deities, Catholic saints and conquistador legends. The institutionalized effigy of Maximón is under the control of a local religious brotherhood and resides in various houses of its membership during the course of a year, being most ceremonially moved in a grand procession during Semana Santa.    Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_de_Atitlán The rain was starting to let up as we walked through a maze of cobblestone alleyways to the house of Maximón. The courtyard was was thick with the smoke of incense and the light drizzle of rain collected on the blue plastic...

Horseback riding through a coffee plantation and up high in the hills we came across the village of La Pintada. The people here live in modest homes with small vegetable gardens and very little wealth. They are happy. The homes are constructed of mud brick with corrugated metal roofs, all that is needed to keep the rain and sun out. Pictured below is a typical kitchen, which is the main area of the house. The mother below is cooking corn tortillas over a wood fire. Corn is life in Central America. Many of the houses have small vegetable gardens for their families and many work on the larger nearby farms. The children of the village greeted us with a song and many corn husk dolls and flowers for a ‘good price’. This gives the children great pride as they are able to help out the family by bringing in a little bit of money. We spent the afternoon fending off the doll purchases and watching the boys play soccer. The two grandsons in our group joined in. I seemed to have a...

A short bus ride through the cobblestone streets of Copan we reached the ruins considered the “Athens of the Maya World”. Here we were led by a Maya expert who provided some alternative insights to the Maya compared to traditional archeological interpretations. One of the topics he presented was that many of the ancient structures were used as observatories. What is the point of an observatory when you can see the stars from the ground? In many religions around the world the people would use mountains to get closer to their deities. He suggested that in the May world, they built their mountains to become closer to the deities in the form of pyramids. He also stated that the Maya used astronomy to determine the change of the seasons. In the tropics there is not a lot of seasonal diversity. The winter and summer solstices provided that change point which determined when to plant.

We traveled by bus through El Salvador and Guatemala to get to Copan, Honduras. The border at Guatemala was lined with semi trucks waiting for their paperwork to be cleared so that they could cross the border from El Salvador. The line of trucks on the sides of the road must have been at lest 5 miles long. Tighter restrictions to prevent the drug cartels from using overland transportation to move illegal drugs into Guatemala and limited personnel to search the trucks, drivers can wait several days to cross. The highway was quite narrow there were no measures to accommodate the wall of parked trucks creating only one lane traffic. Jaime did a fabulous job weaving in-between the parked semis. At one point just when he started to gain some movement, on a blind curve mind you, three times he had to back up to allow the trucks the right of way. We reached to border station, filed off the bus only to dodge two local cows, half-crazed running around the cars, buses and people in the ...

We arrived at the airport in El Salvador around 6:30 pm and it was already dark - didn’t get to see much on the way to San Salvador that night. We got up early the next morning, it was hazy, warm and the air was heavy with humidity. We had a buffet breakfast in the hotel restaurant; eggs, hash browns, the papaya and pineapple were amazing! We met the members of our group, ten grandparents, two grandchildren, our trip Leader Carlos, and the bus driver Jaime. Most of the people in our group have traveled quite extensively and are “Inner Circle” members with OAT. We are definitely the newbies as this is our second trip. They are friendly, full of energy and have terrific stories travels. I can’t wait to hear more in the coming days. San Salvador is called the valley of hammocks because of the ‘swinging’ from the many earthquake tremors that occur through out the area. El Salvador has 3 active volcanos out of the 23 that make up the landscape of the tiny country. Still consider...

The ash from a volcano eruption covered this typical Maya Village in its original state, much like Pompeii in Italy. These are the ruins of ordinary people, unlike many of the other well know monuments in Central America which are the ruins of the wealthy. Pictured below is a typical adobe house. The raised platforms on the left inside the home are where the inhabitants slept. Inside on the Right was most likely used for storage. Outside on the left is where the kitchen where they would grind the corn and cook meals over a wood fire.

The departure day is fast approaching! 21 days following the Route of Maya in Central America with Overseas Adventure Travel in which we will be visiting El Salvador, Hondorous, Guatemala and Belize. This is our second trip with OAT. The first adventure was an absolute fabulous journey to Egypt in 2011 just after the uprising to remove President Mubarak from office. I have to say that we felt very safe and it was the best time to go - not too many tourists, we pretty much had the country to ourselves! Figuring out what technology and photo stuff to bring is the most important since we are photographers after all. I have been struggling for some time now on the ‘right’ photo bag - years really. I don’t want to be tied down with a bunch of gear and a huge backpack like when in Egypt. The huge backpack was cumbersome and heavy on the hot days trekking through the temples. This time, I have decided to still take that huge Lowpro pack for the plane trips since I will be bringing ...