Angry Birds

At least that's how the first one strikes me. A snowy egret, I think, with a bad attitude. Mean claws, too.

We took a two hour boat ride on the estuary between Tamarindo and Playa Grande with a local guide, Gerardo Santana, who knows his stuff. Almost all of the waterway is undeveloped and wildlife is left to itself but for a few small tourist boats. At one point we went up a small side channel, pulled up to the shore and walked through the forest looking for howler monkeys.

The bird taking off is a great blue heron. My traveling companion and family naturalist tells me that the third is a yellow banded black heron. Not sure about that - the beaks are so different.

Oh, and not a good idea to take a swim here.           

Brewer Fountain

We Watch (Part Of) The Stupid Bowl

Long-time readers of this blog know that Mrs. C and I dislike American football. It's all about gratuitous violence, brain damage, life-long disabilities, and most of all money, as crass as greed can get. (Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?) Back in the U.S., we always go out to dinner for our own private Stupid Bowl party. If the restaurant is open you get the best table and service. But we're in Costa Rica.

I thought it might be fun to go to one of the big beachfront bar-restaurants here to photograph the scene. It was interesting if unsurprising. We had never seen a Super Bowl half time show so we stayed for that. Now I don't know Lady Gaga from Lady Macbeth but it was kind of sort of mildly fun. Then we returned to our condo. The best part was the moon through the palm trees.             

Vygies in the veld outside Matatiele

Vygies come in all shapes, sizes and colours.  These little ones I found on the mountain above Matatiele on a visit to the Matatiele Mountain Lake.  I have two types of vygies in my garden, both creeper type plants with tin green leaves.  This specific one has ticker and rounder leaves and look a more like a typical succulent.  A little search on the internet gave me the following: 

Stone plants - Aizoaceae or Ficoidaceae is a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants containing 135 genera and about 1900 species. They are commonly known as stone plants, carpet weeds or vygies. 

Surf

Today's theme song.

We ain't got no surf in the Mississippi and you sure wouldn't want to spread out your towel on the waterside mud. So if I want shots like this I have to go to Playa Tamarindo.