Costa Rica, pura vida

 This tree is bad-ass. Covered with moss, ferns, water droplets, it sits untouched in the middle of a rainforest hundreds of years old.

 Hummingbird feeding in the hummingbird sanctuary within the Monteverde Cloud Forest.

 Sloth in the wild. Words cannot express the excitement we felt at witnessing this for the first time. a) he was moving faster than you might expect b) i did scream, but that meant the bus braked to a stop  quickly.

Up closer, once the kind driver backed up the bus. Not going to tell you how long we just stared out the window at this.

 Gecko that made a home on my backpack right before the boat to Tortuguero. Later he was memorialized in my part on the mural for the Costa Rica Animal Rescue Center.

 Marmoset and her little tiny baby!!! The baby is about 3-4 inches in height, the mother is about half a foot tall. There were about 8 rescued marmosets at the rescue center and the parents of this baby took turns keeping it happy.

 I played with the marmoset by allowing it to grab on to the end of the paintbrush during breaks from working on the Center's mural.

                                            View from above, Alajuela, San Jose, Costa Rica

                                                 View from above, Mexico City at night

 The left side of the mural, all that has purple-blue background, was my contribution to the mural. Can't take credit for the owl and the tree but the gecko represents backpack gecko, and the toucan, Monteverde, my favorite town in Costa Rica. The Animal Rescue Center is a unique place that takes in animals that have been abused, illegally sold, and more. Some animals can later be released into the wild and some animals need to remain in the care of the Center, but many volunteers are accepted to come for lengths of time to help out with animal feeding, grounds care, and more at the Center.

 We were only there for one day but tried to contribute whatever artwork we could. To learn more you can visit http://www.costaricaanimalrescuecenter.org/   There are also other rescues that are species-specific, throughout the country. Though Costa Rica is remarkable for its preservation and environmentally-friendly practices, deforestation and illegal poaching still happen in certain areas and wildlife need the active protection and preservation practices of humans to continue.

Friends. I told them this was my favorite photo of the trip, and I meant it. Words cannot express the hilarity of forcing Sarah to go into the McDonalds in Costa Rica with us. The more embarrassed she was, the more we ate it up.

Costa Rica: An Active Adventure

About a week ago (ha), I returned from a trip to Costa Rica. One of the goals of the trip was to spend less time online and wrapped up in technology, and more time with space from that. So I didn't blog while I was there but hindsight is 20-20 and now I can show you all the wonderful things that were there.

400 year old Ceiba (?) tree, found in rainforest by base of Arenal volcano

 If you look closely into the water behind the foliage, that's the crater lake that is inside of a dormant volcano. You have to hike about four hours up to reach this lake, and then you can swim inside the crater!

 This is the crater lake from a close-up view. You have the inside of the volcano and the rainforest surrounding the lake on all sides, as the crater is set down inside of the volcano.

This is a hammock chair at one of the hostel/B&Bs we stayed at. You can swing in the mist, essentially, and help yourself to free bananas. They also grow and harvest their own coffee in the plantation out back.

Fungus tree.

                                                      Bean Plant? Unsure. But it looks cool.

                     Road we walked along for about 2-3 miles to reach the hike of the day. Beautiful mist                                                                     behind the horses grazing.

 After you spend the day hiking, walking, trekking, and all sweaty or rained-on, you treat yourself to the freshest fruit juice you've ever tasted.

One of my best friends, Debra, who was my travel buddy and super stoked to try all the local food. This was day 1.