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!

Costa Rica Sketch Journal ~ July 7, 2008

Days go by in a strange way here ~ as they're passing, they seem languid and slow. But suddenly it seems they have swiftly passed and it's time to go home. How can that be?

The morning of July 7 started out with flocks of parrots racketing by overhead and a brown-hooded parrot grooming on our favorite viewing branches, silvery arms emerging from a canopy tree easily seen from the railing of the restaurant as we ate breakfasts and lunches. By ten, Dan'l and I were down at the beach in the tidepools. Yesterday there had been people walking on the beach, but this morning there were none so we were skinny-dipping in the tidepool basins of warm water. What an elemental pleasure!

I'd gotten slightly sunburned the day before, so I soon jumped out to do some beachcombing ~ finding one of the biggest seedpods we'd yet seen, full of what looked like meadow muffins (horse doo-doo for you city slickers). Then I spent some time sitting on a log with my sketchbook and a spikey brown and turquoise rock-lobster shell I found. The sketch came out pretty well except for the big splotch of bug juice on it, which came splatting down out of the beach almond tree shading me. Ah well, at least it was in the right color range....

When we returned, I spent the rest of the day on our terraza, drinking in the peace and quiet, journaling and sketching the heliconia just off the terraza, drawing my beach treasures (I painted them several days later), and starting my bird list for this Costa Rica trip. I'm not an avid birder, but I do love to see new ones, or watch even ordinary birds doing interesting things, and I'm fairly good at identifying them. Daniel enjoys them, too, although he doesn't make a list. He's sharp-eyed and often spots them first to show me.

When it began to sprinkle/mist around 4:30, a mixed flock of birds appeared and a gorgeous little euphonia began eating the brilliant red seeds of a palm-like plant next to the terraza. While it hung around for only about five minutes, I examined it minutely, then when it left I plunked down on the concrete and sketched the plant. Using the bird book and my brand-new sharp memories of the euphonia, I drew it, gumming the seeds as we had observed, onto the plant.

I finished the watercolor pencil painting of the little euphonia by the dimmish overhead light, sitting on my bed. The cabinas are only sparsely lit, to avoid attracting insects out of the forest and disrupting their lives. To further discourage them, we closed all the louvred wooden blinds on the windows as suggested by the people at El Remanso. Painting by that dim light didn't seem to hurt the rendering too much.

More later.