Costa Rica, Part Five of Five, La Paz Waterfall Gardens: Of Ferns, Leaves, Cameras, Humidity, Birds, and Several More Mediocre Things That In Combination and Scale Really Weren't So Mediocre After All

 Welcome to the last part of my Costa Rica adventure.  I hope you've been enjoying what I've written and photographed so far. By the way, this post sets the Guinness World Record for longest title on The Wild Land of Lincoln.  That may or may not have been intentional.

La Paz Waterfall Gardens is located somewhere north of San Jose near the town of Alajuela and up in the clouds someplace.  I suspect it's a piece of heaven that fell down and landed on some mountain.  It was probably a part of the water supply.  In all seriousness, or as much as I ever tend to use, this is a stunningly beautiful area.  Here's what I saw when I first came through the entrance:

That bird is a subtropical cacique (Cacicus uropygnalis uropygalis), likely a male due to the size of the red coloring.  This is one of my favorite pictures of all time.  You just don't get birds like this in Illinois.  Okay, maybe we do have birds like this (Tanagers, orioles, and warblers, I'm looking at you) but it was still a really nice bird.

We then went into a buffet for tourists, full of such blessed nourishments for our bodies as french fries and pizza.  I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  After eating mostly the Costa Rican staple of rice and beans all week, (which were prepared using different seasonings most of the time and were actually pretty good)  it was great to have norteamericano food.  I continued thinking I'd gone to heaven as I looked at the orchids surrounding the buffet, until I went into the bathroom and found a two inch long cave cricket in my stall.  After lunch, we went around the zoological gardens part of La Paz Waterfall Gardens.

As we were in the cloud forest, this was basically every tree trunk's appearance.  Hummingbirds flocked to nearby feeders.  A sign stated that 26 hummingbird species had been recorded from these feeders.  TWENTY SIX!  In Illinois, we have only one common hummingbird species, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, or Archilochus colubris.  I had never seen such a diverse display of hummingbirds, or, to be fair, any species that wasn't the Ruby-throated Hummingbird.  These jewels of the avian class were accustomed to visitors and let us get within six feet.  Of course, my camera hated the dim lighting of the clouds and shade, so here are some pictures.  I really don't know what better to expect given the lighting conditions... until my phone camera worked twice as well.  I give up.  How is it that a machine built for the sole purpose of taking pictures takes worse pictures than a machine built to do hundreds of various tasks, not limited to taking pictures?  As you ponder that, look at the following photos.  The first one is mine, and the rest are Dr  R-----'s photos, whom possessed a better camera.

 We spent a few minutes at the hummingbirds, but our group only had two hours to visit (which was a complete shame, if understandable due to our schedule, though I could have spent several days and not taken in everything that we saw.)  So we moved on.  My camera and I had developed open hostilities at this point, so, praying that my phone would have enough battery to last, I used my phone camera instead... and it worked better.

I highly recommend, if you feel frustrated by your photographic equipment, then just stop photographing.  It will make you feel better, and a good deal of the experience becomes more real when you are not behind a lens.  Also, use your phone camera.

Advice over, we hiked down into the waterfall section of the gardens.  The humidity was firmly 100%.  I do not believe the air can be more saturated.  We were in a cloud (hence cloud forest) while it was raining next to the spray of a chain of rapids and waterfalls.  I've had baths that were drier. Now, here are the photos.  I have nothing to say, other than, of all the places I have ever visited, only one has ever made it onto my phone as a wallpaper.  I'll let you guess where that is.

It was this photo.

 The ferns on the right of the picture are the largest tree ferns I have ever seen, either in a greenhouse or the wild, or even in pictures.

My coat was soaked through by the sheer humidity of the area.  I could have jumped in a creek and stayed drier.  I keep trying, but there is no way to communicate how wet it was, or how spectacular.

Plants, of course, were everywhere.  Few were flowering, but of the ones that were, this bromeliad was a stellar example.  It was dwarfed, however, by the sheer size of the following plants.  Photo credit Dr.  R----- for reasons that will soon become apparent.

Sadly, it is a bit blurred, but that is a 5' 8'' blogger next to the leaves of a Gunnera species.  The locals refer to these as the poor man's umbrella.  I was very tempted to rip off a leaf and use it for that purpose, but as most of the water was atmospheric humidity, such an endeavor would have been unsuccessful.

Here, the river cuts through a gorge onto the next set of waterfalls.  All of these waterfalls lay several hundred feet from each other, and the whole trail was only about two miles long.

 I'm in the jungle.  This view just sold that idea to me at the time, and it still does today.

   La Paz Waterfall Gardens is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited.

This is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken.

Here you get an idea of how close these waterfalls are to each other.

This was my final view as I left the area with my group, and two days later left Costa Rica itself.  The barren area along the bottom right corner was the edge of the road.   I hope you've enjoyed seeing a bit of Costa Rica with me, and trust me, what I have planned for this year is quite a lot. I just bought a new car, and I think it may need some testing on backcountry roads in the vicinity of a nearby nature preserve where short-eared owls are known to reside in the winter.  Stay tuned.