We left the U.S. on the anniversary of the coup attempt, seeking the playa. One of my in-laws was taking advantage of Costa Rica’s health care system to get some essential care done that was neither insured nor affordable back home, and we decided to all tag along on our first family vacation since Covid. There’s a direct flight now two days a week from Austin to the city of Liberia in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, on the Pacific coast, and as the first magic islands came into view through the airplane window, we realized that it was now easier to get to a Central American jungle than it is to visit my parents in southern Iowa.
When we took our boys a few years ago (the last big family trip, as the boys are now out in the wild) we took a day cruise down the Rio Negro, which, if we had kept going, would have crossed into Nicaragua. Lots of amazing birds and insects and animals, but what was telling for me was learning landowners were given financial or tax considerations for their land (and therefore cattle) to not encroach closer than something like 50 yards to the river's edge and how some still ignore those restrictions.
I've been learning how to watercolor - I'm still in that phase where everything I make looks amateurish, which is fine - but I adored so many of your pictures and want to paint them.
When we took our boys a few years ago (the last big family trip, as the boys are now out in the wild) we took a day cruise down the Rio Negro, which, if we had kept going, would have crossed into Nicaragua. Lots of amazing birds and insects and animals, but what was telling for me was learning landowners were given financial or tax considerations for their land (and therefore cattle) to not encroach closer than something like 50 yards to the river's edge and how some still ignore those restrictions.
This is so beautiful!
I've been learning how to watercolor - I'm still in that phase where everything I make looks amateurish, which is fine - but I adored so many of your pictures and want to paint them.
And I love the idea of "la madrugada."
“ La madrugada” is a name I have long needed for a time I know so well, but couldn’t describe.
As always, WOW! Thanks for this fantastic journey through a foreign land. It brightened my cold, rainy Austin day.