Comprising a Life

The follow photographs were taken durring trips to Costa Rica with my good friend and director of New Orleans Botanical Gardens, Paul Soniat. A highlight of our first trip included a trip to the Tortuguera area, rich in animal and plantlife as well serving as a  nesting grounds for several species of sea tortoise. To get to the Tortuguera, which is acually a land spit formed by the Caribbean sea and a naturaly ocurring innercaostal canal, we took an old converted banana train from Cartago to Puerto Limon where we boaded a small bus to take us to the beginning end of the canal. Our destination was a primative barrack with a generator and very little else built to house crazy folks like ourselves who wanted to see the jungle with few frills attached. (See Tortuguera area, in navigation bar.)

On our second trip we retained the services of the English speaking botanist and plantsman, John Hall as well as the services of the primary driver for Costa Rica's main highway building firm. With John Hall we were able to visit places and habitats that we would have never been able to find on our own.  He took us to isolated bogs and to the flanks of active volcanoes where we enjoyed viewing all manner of strange plant life including orchids and bromiliads and other epiphytes. The highlight of the second trip though, was the Monteverde cloud forest and preserve. (See Monteverde area, in navigation bar.)

The following photographs are of general scenes and plants taken around Costa Rica.

Puya is a genus in the bromeliad family. Normally native toVenezuela, this isolated population in Costa Rica started here from wind blown seeds.