Sunday, 8 December 2024

Costa Rica 1992: A Palm Viper and Morre Jungle


      Continuing on our way to the Reserve, we came upon a meter-long, slender snake with a cream-colored underside.  It had just started to cross the road in front of us, but then turned around, went slithering through some grass, then up a tree.  I struggled to get the telephoto lens onto my camera, but it was already up in the tree by the time I did.  I managed to take a photo of it from below, as it strung out across some branches above me.  

    When I described it later at a slide presentation, the naturalist thought it sounded like a palm viper, which is toxic.  I was happy it didn’t drop down on me when I was taking its photo.   We also watched a three inch lizard that seemed to hop instead of crawl.

    We paid another $10 each once we got to the Reserve entrance and took the el Camino, a 2 kilometer old road.  We saw a flock of birds the size of crows, that were blue like a Canada Jay, but they had a powder blue “cap’ on their heads.

    We were eager to go to the “Mirador” (overlook), but unfortunately but the area around it was totally clouded in, so we couldn’t see much on the self-guided trail.  It was however, very beautifully lush with all of the leaves of the jungle plants dripping with the condensed water from the clouds that surrounded them.

    We met some girls who also happened to be from BC.  They asked us where we were from and when we told them McBride, one said, “Oh, that’s where they are having the forests fires.”   That was not something we wanted to hear, but since they had just left Vancouver two days earlier, we could only assume that the Robson Valley was still having problems during our first week of being away.




You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant.ca

No comments:

Post a Comment