January 6: The Laguna and North to Santa Rosa

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

The Laguna


The Laguna is a cutoff meander of the Tarcoles River, accessible by a muddy track.	Amazingly, there are a number of private landowners who use this road to access their holdings. In the rainy season this area is under water over the top of the truck.

	Left: bullhorn acacia. Ants live in the hollow thorns and kill off both animals and plants that threaten the acacia. Below: the canopy.

	Left and below: bananas. This area was cultivated before being included in the park and there are still a lot of introduced plants here.





	Pale-billed woodpecker.
	Left: the laguna. Below: how do herons coexist with crocodiles? Very carefully.




	Left and above: Great Blue Heron Below: Tiger Heron



	A troop of white-faced capuchins

	Two morphos with folded wings enjoy pineapple scraps.
	Looking out to the highway from the Research Station.
	We can more or less forget about looking for morphos as long as this guy is prowling the compost pit.


	Samantha Olsen goes native.




	A melon field. Netting is used to shade the melons.

	Above: the lagoon at Caldera. Left: Coastal bluffs
	Left and below: the scenery is nice but it's an intensely frustrating ride since good photo opportunities are rare and fleeting.



	Holiday lights were still up in Liberia.
	The restaurant in Liberia had some nice wood carvings.

	Twilight in Liberia

	Giovanny.
	Orientation and discussion time.
	Samantha Olsen, Jesse Berger and Phil Hahn Below: Ghosties and ghoulies, and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night.

Above: wasp nest (they're about an inch and a half long) Below: Tarantula	Above: whip scorpion: harmless Below: real scorpion, not so harmless, and about three inches long.

Created 18 January 2008, Last Update 11 June 2020