That now makes 18 national symbols for Costa Rica! Read about why this one and what the other national symbols are in this Tico Times Article. And be sure to check out my collection of Blue Morpho photos in my Blue Morpho Gallery! Including this one below.
I’ve decided that two weeks of posts on this lodge may be enough, so I’m referring everyone to the gallery which has been ready awhile. Because of so many amazing flowers in their gardens, I may someday go back to more posts on them, but for now other photos from my life in nature in Costa Rica. You may click the image of gallery to go to the gallery or use this link:
Because it is actively erupting now you cannot go in the park near the craters, but my driver took me and Stijn the high road from Irazú to near the top of Turrialba and then around through the farms to the bottom and back to Guayabo Lodge. The big thing to me was how many vegetable gardens or fields of vegetables were growing on the side of the volcano with the rich volcanic ash. I noticed especially a lot of onions, carrots, squash and leafy green vegetables – and I’m sure there’s many others.
Yes – that’s rather surprising! Especially this Irazú Volcano, the highest in Costa Rica and usually above the clouds as seen in one of the following photos or the feature photo at top. As the highest, it is the only volcano from which you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on a clear day, though not a clear day while I was there. 🙂
Irazú has two craters, one inactive and one occasionally mildly active, with sometimes both craters filling with water in the rainy season (not now) to form beautiful lakes. But the biggest surprise to me was the number and variety of flowers and other plants, even trees around both craters and “the beach,” a large, flat sandy, desert-like area above both craters with hills going above that, all with plants growing on them!
And as I will denote tomorrow in my post on the neighboring Turrialba Volcano, the land below an active volcano grows great vegetables with the soil enriched by the regular deposits of the rich volcanic ash! 🙂 When it erupts during the windy dry season (Dec-Mar) I get some of that rich ash on my garden and even as dust all over my furniture at less than a hundred air miles away! 🙂
Yeah, that’s the real common name for this butterfly, Blushing Phantom, (link to Wikipedia article with very little info), the Cithaerias pireta pireta (Mexico to Colombia, Ecuador) also known as the “Pink tipped Clearwing Satyr” and the “Rusted Clearwing Satyr.” It is my first one to see and also the only “clearwing” I’ve seen with an eye spot! It was in the jungles of the archaeological site Guayabo National Monument, Costa Rica, so maybe it’s a prehistoric butterfly! 🙂
I’m not sure if the wasp was challenging the butterfly for the flower or just happen to pass by. 🙂 But as usual, neither stayed long! This is a common butterfly and you can see one more in my Mexican Silverspot Gallery and how different the other side of their wings are; but the flower is what’s unusual and at Guayabo Lodge was my first time to see it. It is a “Red Vein Indian Mallow” (Abution striatum) sometimes incorrectly called a “Chinese Lantern” and one of the Ticos there called it a “bottle flower” in Spanish, “Flor de botella.” I will do a later post on just this flower with more information and better photos of the flower. 🙂
One is a butterfly and the other maybe the busiest week in Costa Rica.
Crimson Patch Butterfly
This butterfly is one I photographed at Guayabo Lodge last week and my first time for it! I had earlier mistaken a Bordered Patch for this species, but the big difference is the two-toned orange on the underside of wing. 🙂 See my new Crimson Patched Gallery and to compare the two, my older Bordered Patch Gallery. Even though the photo above is of a damaged butterfly, I like that photo better than the next one below because of the better soft background which I just learned yesterday from another blog is called a “Bokeh” photo – “. . . defined as ‘the effect of a soft out-of-focus background that you get when shooting a subject, using a fast lens, at the widest aperture, such as f/2.8 or wider.’ Simply put, bokeh is the pleasing or aesthetic quality of out-of-focus blur in a photograph.” ~nikonusa.com
With over 2000 species of spiders in Costa Rica, it is hard to identify many of them and my internet search did not help find an ID for this guy that I photographed at the Guayabo Lodge, Turrialba, Cartago, Costa Rica. There are many kinds of Tarantulas and I’m reasonably sure he is in that family. He was a little smaller than the palm of my hand, so not a large Tarantula.
¡Pura Vida!
And I’ll get to my bird photos eventually, just too many photos to process. 🙂 And of course I have a Spiders Gallery! 🙂
Three different bees that I have not tried to identify yet from my time at Guayabo Lodge, near Turrialba, Costa Rica through yesterday.
And for those who have written about my health, I went to Clinica Linea Vital for a checkup yesterday and an added visit to Santa Sophia Clinic for x-rays. Plus I got two shots and Rx’s for inflammation, swelling and something else she noted that will relieve my pains. So I do try to take care of myself, even if clumsy in my old age! 🙂
On the tile and concrete entrance sidewalk I photographed this beetle yesterday and sure it is one of the dozens of Scarab Beetles and pretty sure it is in the sub-category of Golden Scarab Beetles. I don’t have a beetle book and the internet is taking more time than I wanted to spend for the exact ID! 🙂