Costa Rica and a little Panama (Pic Heavy)

My aunt who splits her time between Naples, FL and Costa Rica has been bugging us to go to Costa Rica for a long time. Although our "official" vacation plans for 2012 are to go to Cuba for 2 weeks, she offered us her home and 4WD and we both could spare some vacation time at work so how could we resist.

We just got back Sunday. We spent a total of 15 days travelling through different parts of country. We also made a stop down in Panama. The islands that make up Bocas del Toro to be exact. We had no real itinerary, just kind of went where the roads took us.

I took a ton of pics from the trip. It was so hard to narrow it down to only my extreme favs. I apologize for sharing so many pics. Hope you don't mind.

The flora in Costa Rica is beautiful. I think I read somewhere that of the 28 or so Life Zones, Costa Rica contains 13 of them. Don't quote me on the exact numbers. Every where you go there is lush growth. Most of the country is protected, natural forests. Both rain and cloud forests.





Just about everything grows on trees in this place. :scratch



Its not difficult to find yummy, fresh food in this country. There is a bakery on every corner and people selling fresh fruit and vegetables on the streets.







The people are extremely warm and welcoming. My wife and I travelled all throughout the country and we never met an unfriendly person along the way. This is an American Navy Vet that retired in Costa Rica 20 years ago. I spent some time chatting with him after I took this photo of him and his young son. They often go to this park to feed the birds.



Even clowns like to hang out at the park.



One of the most remote places we visited was Tortuguero National Park. It's one of many protected areas in Costa Rica. You have to travel by boat to reach the peninsula. Aside from a small village and a few lodges, the area is undeveloped jungle, canals and coastline.



We spent a few hours in the village of Tortuguero. There are no cars in this village. Most people travelled on bikes or walked. However remote though, toursim has made it's mark here.



But, life still seemed very simple and slow paced in this village.





We also visited four of the hundred or so volcanoes in Costa Rica. The ones we visited were all in the north central part of the country. Unfortunately, none had active lava flows. The first we visited was the Poas volcano. Again, this is another National Park area with easy trails that wind you through the jungle that leads up to the crater. The walk up to the crater was like nothing I've experienced. It's all cloud forest so you are literally walking among the clouds.

A bench along an access road that leads up to the mouth of the paved trail. I thought it was quite spooky.



Once you reach the trail, you immediately become engulfed by the surrounding forest.



And as you go higher, it gets a bit more eerie.



You finally reach secondary crater that has become on a lagoon. We reached it just as the clouds were rolling in. Unfortunately, by the time we reach the main crater, it was completely smothered in clouds and not visible so no photos of it. :cry



We also ventured up to the Arenal volcano but this time we were lucky enough to make it just before it got covered by clouds.



We hit the Irazu volcano but on the way up, I turned down the wrong road but it was a stroke of luck because we found ourselves staring at the Turrialbo volcano. We parked on the shoulder and found a game trail that lead us to a better view about 500mm off the road.



We eventually made our way back and up to the Irazu crater. This was the easiest to access of all of them. You're able to drive and park within a few hundred meters of the crater itself, which is filled with water. We were told that the water level was low at this time of year.





The drive down from Irazu was absolutely beautiful. This area appeared to be all farmland and there were many small farm houses that caught my eye during the drive.







We saw many waterfalls along our travels and there are rivers at every turn. Here are a few of my favorite shots of them.









Along the way we saw a lot of animals and I photographed many of them. I've already added way too many photos to this thread so I will narrow the animal pics down to my favorite three.

First, a howler monkey that was nice enough to come down low in the canopy and pose for this shot.



Next is a beautiful Ocelet cat. At least I think it's one. It was larger than a house cat. Maybe a bit smaller than a medium sized dog. Absolutely beautiful.



And last but not least, the animal I knew nothing about before our trip and now I absolutely love. The sloth. This is a male 3-toed sloth. You can tell it's a male by the marking on it's back. They also have 2-toed sloths in CR. They're tan in color and a bit larger. We did see them but never with a clear or close enough shot.



Damn... I haven't shared one shot of Panama. We only spent two days there so I guess I will only share one shot of the place in this thread and make another thread about it. This shot is in Isla Colon in Bocas del Toro, an archipelago just of the coast of Panama/Costa Rica border.