The Traveling Cloud

Costa Rica 2012

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Artist portfolio

I'm currently working on an online artist portfolio! I only have a few things up so far, but please feel free to visit My online porfolio!

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The End

This is the end of my Costa Rica blog. But I have good news! I am now running another blog, which (I think) is full of interesting things to read and look at. Feel free to check it out (and follow me :D) at cloudosaurus.tumblr.com.

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Here is the beach we were at for the last few days of our trip. It was truly a tropical paradise. The water was so blue that the waves would turn brown when there was a riptide because the sand was being sucked into the wave (we all learned to avoid brown waves).

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This sloth was just chillin on a rope above the road last night! My first good sloth sighting! I bet he is still there this morning.

In other news, I'm done with finals and at the beach!! And it is awesome. Apparently there are sloths and spider monkeys galore down here. :)

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I think this may the first full frog I've seen on the UGA campus. I was studying on the porch of the dorms, and when I looked up there he was on the post supporting the roof! Super cute :) Most of the frog like things we see turn out to be cane toads, which are not nearly as exciting as real frogs!! :D

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This is a giant moth that was hanging out on the wall of our dorms this evening. Size is hard to tell from this pic, but its wingspan was bigger than my hand from wrist to finger tip. Another one showed up a few minutes later. I really like that they have apostrophes on their wings

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The first picture is another view from the top of our hike. In the second picture, the white line right in the middle is the San Luis waterfall that we hiked to a few weeks ago and got to swim in (I posted picture of it up close, too). I think that it is amazing that it is such a big waterfall that you can see if from miles and miles away. Beautiful. Without my awesome zoom lens, it looks just like a teeny tiny, obscured white line.

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Today we walked up the road on the side of the mountain and talked about geology. When we got to the peak of our short hike we looked out over the mountains. If you look closely in the second picture, you can see the Gulf of Nicoya cut horizontally right through the middle of the photo. On the far side of the Gulf is Nicoya Peninsula, which you can also faintly see in this picture. The first picture is of us going down a little path that looks like a tunnel of trees. :)

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I finally saw a white faced Capuchin monkey today! In fact, I saw a lot of them, but this guy was nicely photogenic. It seems that the past few days my luck with getting pics of animals on my "to get a picture of" list has increased!

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This is what long tailed manakin duet sounds like. This recording almost definitely is of the manakin I got a picture of, along with his duetting partner. Long Tailed Manakins sing in pairs for a reason. The more mature, experienced singer always gets the lady, so you would think that it would not be beneficial at all for another male to sing with him. However, when the older male dies (or if something else happens to him) the "apprentice" singer becomes the alpha male and then he gets all the ladies and a fresh apprentice to sing with him. Really good duets get more females than ones that haven't practiced enough or aren't in synch. :)

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This photo is my crown jewel of the day (or maybe my week haha). This is a long tailed manakin. I heard a pair of them duetting so I hung out around their tree for about ten minutes until finally one flew over to check me out. I've been waiting to get a pic of one of these guys since coming here!!

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As we were walking out of the Children's Eternal Rainforest we spotted this really adorable agouti! Look at how cute he is! Agoutis are kinda like giant gerbils. Also, here is some kind of frog peeking out of the water at the botanical gardens :)

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While we were in the Children's Eternal Rainforest we also saw this really cute tanager. It was all green with a yellow belly and a bit of periwinkle on the top of its head :)

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Here is a giant walking stick we found on one of our screen windows, and a random pretty insect

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Today me and a few friends went to the Children's Eternal Rainforest, which is one of the reserves that makes up the Monteverde Cloudforest reserve. It was really beautiful and a great way to spend our free Saturday morning. The first pic here is of a momma spider with a bunch of babies on her back.

Unwittingly, our group acquired a dog for a tourguide. The second pic is a pic of her. We named her Flopsy because one of her ears stuck up while the other flopped down. She followed us the whole time we were there, and even waited patiently for ten minutes when we decided to sit and see what wildlife would come out. Pretty cute, but definitely managed to scare off some wildlife hahaha

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Yesterday we also visited CASEM, which is a women's craft cooperative. It was started in the 80s with just a few women, and now there are (I think) 90 women participating in it! Women get to make handmade goods from home, and then the Coop sells them and gives them the profits. There is a workroom upstairs full of supplies. I think it is very cool that places like this exist.

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This is a small sampling of the birds I saw during the canopy walk. Unfortunately it is very hard to take pics of birds in the canopy because they can hide themselves so well underneath the leaves. The third one is a spangle throated tanager, and the fourth one is some kind of wood creeper.