Leaving Costa Rica ~ Dec. 19, 2010

12/19
When I woke up it was raining a torrent. Hmmm...this did pose a problem for the adventurer who hates rain down her neck. However, there were lots of things on my little deck table to sketch.

So as soon as it was light enough (6:30ish) I was tackling the pile of treasures I'd collected on the beach the day before, including some odd little horned things that look like bullhorn acacia seedpods. Anybody know anything about these in Costa Rica? I've seen something similar in Kenya, but I didn't know they were here...(I just googled "bullhorn acacia," and that's what it is, for sure!)

As I sat sketching in the dim morning light, the flock of Great Curassows flitted by again. These big birds (turkey size) move very fast, and this was the best picture I could get ~ all the others were blurred. The males are solid black with a yellow beak decorations, but the females are this wonderful cinnamon red with barred tails and those tasselled black-and-white topknots! Stunning!

Later that morning, during a lull in the rain, I decided that I was going hiking anyway. The uppermost trail, Passiflora, beckoned, and I took off with my sketching bag encased in a plastic bag to protect my sketchbook and watercolor pencils from a possible shower. Here's the Passiflora Trail at right looking a bit mysterious.

There were lots of things to see, including lichen-striped trees, termite nests attached to monkey-ladder vines, and monkey-ladder vines in tangles. I stopped to watch squirrel monkeys in the trees overhead, and then, in a pattering rush, rain was coming down. I raced for the nearest tree with dense leaves and pressed up against the trunk (glad it wasn't a thorny one!).

A good, dense canopy like the one at left can provide fair shelter for a short rain, then water starts dripping through and you have to dodge around a bit to find a dry spot. I never did take out my sketchbook on that hike.

The wet earth and bark gave off a spicy, earthy scent, and as the rain shower trailed off to mist I resumed my hike, soon coming across these pretty woody flowers, which I sketched later under drier circumstances.

But I was starting to feel forlorn ~ this was my last full day at El Remanso, as I was scheduled to catch a plane the next day. Of course, WHERE that plane was going was really exciting, but still......

But to cheer me up, Mother Nature sent along another adventure. Adri saw me sketching heliconias along a path and asked if I'd seen the boa.

"No!" I exclaimed, and she grinned, saying "Then come see!" and led me to a tall shrub near the swimming pool where, right at eye level, a small boa constrictor was engulfing a Great Crested Flycatcher (Gera had identified the bird ~ it was way too far down the snake's gullet for me to tell).

The boa had apparently been waiting, hidden by leaves, when the bird landed on the branch next to it. The bird was no match for the small snake, which immediately wrapped itself around the bird and squeezed. So much for Tweety-bird! When I got there, the boa had been engulfing the flycatcher for more than an hour.

The snake had anchored its body to the branch with a couple of tail loops, and hung down below, coiled twice around the bird. With glacial speed, it was patiently inching its mouth upward around the bird's chest, which was probably three times the diameter of the snakes body. In the long photo at left, the widest part of the snake, right below the yellow feathers, is the snake's open mouth. The little pink blob at center is its lower front "lip."

Standing only inches away, I sketched and photographed the process. There was only time to get the outline in the fading light, so I took photos to help me finish it later. The whole process took several hours. Having gotten there late, it was dark by the time I finished sketching. By by the light of my flashlight I could see the yellow breast feathers and rufous wing feathers through the stretched-tight skin of the snake's belly. The whole adventure was, in a word, awesome.

By the way, the last picture of the boa's dinner, at right, was taken at dusk. On the disk, I could scarcely see the image. But in Photoshop I was able to improved the contrast considerably, since you can see it pretty well here. I still haven't added the boa's markings to my sketch yet. Maybe by the time I do the tutorial (next month) I will be able to show Before and After images of The Snake's Dinner.

Tomorrow I'll write about leaving Costa Rica and arriving in amazing Iquitos, Peru (not Quito, Ecuador ~ that's a different place).

'Til then!

3rd Day's Class

April 24
6:11am (today is a half-class from 8-10:30)

Last night, after we went to bed, we were awakened around nine-thirty by firecrackers – first a series of “poppers” then a great boom, and what sounded like celebratory cries from the workers’ quarters. Very odd in this quiet atmosphere of shirring cicadas, croaking frogs and faintly crashing surf. Only this morning did we discover that the “fireworks” were actually the sounds of a big forest tree going down and the surprised cries of the Ticos who were nearby. First came the cracking pops of sinewy roots breaking, then the boom as the massive trunk hit the forest floor. I don’t remember hearing crashing sounds as it fell. They must have occurred but since I believed it was firecrackers they didn’t register. Wow!

11:15am ~ Class this morning was short – I planned it this way so that students could have two initial long days to get the basics then two short days to give them time to sketch and draw and color whatever pleased them, with coaching from me during the afternoons. After the morning session of watercolor pencil, the students are beginning to feel they are making progress. They are producing quite excellent drawings of plants and fruits, and they seem a bit amazed and pleased at their previously undiscovered abilities. Even Belen is beginning to believe in herself! Yes!

12:32pm ~ I found this mushroom, a kind of stinkhorn, along the trail to the waterfall near the driveway. It was a delicate lacy white encircled by a shiny, gooey mahogany strip which stank horribly. When I cam back by later, it had already begun to collapse, drooping halfway over, and a tan beetle was crawling into one of the holes. I’ve read about these – the stink draws in beetles looking for a decaying corpse, and the beetles spread the stinkhorn spores as they search for something to eat (or something like that). Joel says it has a lacy mantle over all when it first emerges but I so no sign of one. Ephemeral to the max! I drew this from memory, because I needed to get back to my students. The photo shows it an hour later.

I also found this green leaf on a trail. It has been rolled then belted with an extremely strong silk strand, forming an open-ended tube. There is a wad of silk inside, but nobody is living there. The leaf is chartreuse with shiny top and matte underside. Later: The kitchen staff is familiar with this leaf tube. They say a caterpillar built it, and I’m sure they’re correct.

2:24 ~ The sun is blistering hot (although it’s not too hot in the shade) but I went up to the nest of a pauraque (a nighthawk) which we had seen before on the nightwalk and to which Joel had led us early this morning. I think I took a good photo – it allowed me to approach to within about five feet without moving. I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t known it was there [click on the two photos for a better view]. Now I’ll get back to helping my students. I try for a light presence – leaving them to their own resources for awhile, then returning to help and give advice, but not being too intrusive with my presence. It can be a delicate balance.

5:35 ~ I was busy coaching my hardworking estudientes (busy painting their chayote, mango, carambola and heliconia) when Duende, the gardener, heard an animal scream and went scrambling down the hill to see what had happened. After a short search he discovered a boa constrictor eating an agouti (a rabbit sized rodent with long, skinny legs and short ears). The scene of the crime was directly below the lodge on a very steep wooded slope, down a couple of hundred feet (and I in my sandals with no heel straps and a honky sunburn on the tops of my feet, but no WAY I could miss this adventure). The gardener, the kitchen staff, Irené, and Gerardo, the new guide-in-training, handed me down the slope with grace and great courtesy as I slipped and slithered in true touristy fashion, and they made a place for me barely 3’ from the snake as it worked its gaping mouth over the relatively gigantic head of the agouti. It was terrifically amazing to watch, and I took photos and watched, agog, for about half an hour. Adriana had scrambled down, too and watched the snake from above. Here’s the scene from memory, although I got out a reptile guide to fill in the snake’s pattern (a typical pattern, but not THIS boa's pattern, alas!). I was interested in doing this from memory because I'd just been telling my students how important it is to observe subjects closely enough to be able to draw from memory later. I did okay, I think.

As we watched, the boa engulfed the entire head and started working on the shoulders. It threw a couple of loops around the body to squish it smaller yet, although it seemed amazing that it could possibly get that huge hairy cylinder into its sinewy tube of a body. Gerardo estimated it would be another forty-five minutes before the boa could get it all down, and since it was very uncomfortable perching on the steep slope, and the engulfing was happening slo-mo, and the kitchen staff needed to get back to preparing dinner, we returned, with Irené hauling me up the steepest parts while Gerardo shoved discreetly from behind on a couple of occasions. What an adventure! Later: Elyer, the head waiter (who is working to be naturalist guide) says this boa was about 1½ meters long, fairly small.