Animals of Central America

There were green alligators and long necked geese.
Some humpyback camels and some chimpanzees.
Some cats and rats and eli-phants, and sure as your born...
The loveliest of all was the unicorn......
                           Irish Rover song....

 
No I didn't run into these guys on the trip
but seemed to have run into everything else....

A Pair of ? Parrots resting at the butterfly farm in Costa Rica. 

  
Perhaps a Macaw at the same farm.


The infamous Blue Maroth Butterfly of Central America on the butterfly farm I visited; followed by a few more pictures of residents of the farm.

 
Shhhh................ its the butterfly nursery......

The first real differences in wildlife I noticed from what I am used to coming from Michigan was as I approached the Gulf of Mexico along the Texas coast. Here there were signs saying not to feed the alligators as you approached certain small pools with walkways along them. These were in the National Wildlife Refuge of Laguna Alascosa, one of the last natural "coastal marsh prairies" left in the U.S. Here I was also treated to seeing the endangered small cat species, the Ocelot, as well as pelicans, whooping cranes, and a large variety of coastal birds; including the Piping Plover which is an endangered bird and is protected in Michigan as well.

A Pelican along the gulf coast.

A rare sight, an Ocelot in the Laguna Alascoca National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

Vultures working a Caribbean beach in Costa Rica.

Outside of Vultures, Eagles and lizards that ran on their hind legs (looking like with shorts and tennis shoes they could be entering a race), and a friendly scorpion in my motel room in Nicaragua, most of the really "exotic" wildlife I saw came in Costa Rica.

Animals on the road or by them are very common in Central America.

Unfortunately not all the animals one encounters on the roads are alive.

Costa Rica has one of the highest concentrations of different animal and plant species in the world. To say one isn't in Kansas anymore is an understatement. From big snakes to big spiders it seems everything including plant life is not only larger, but in huge variety; Costa Rica has about 4,000 different plant species.

 
A local greets the bus for a "photo shoot" for tourists, for a dollar.

Also greeting the touristas was the local tree sloth, who at the rate it was moving may still well be there; it had moss growing on it it moves so slow.

Giant Rhinoceros Beatles and another large crawler were at the butterfly farm in Costa Rica.

Walking Sticks

As well as.......... 

 
Walking Spiders

Are all part of the insect life in Costa Rica

Examples of the variety of animals here include 63 different species of humming birds (according to one local), beautifully colored and vocal jungle birds of all kinds, many kinds of butterflies that can can be seen in farms where they are hatched, beetles and spiders as big as a small hand, Jaguars, Spider and Howler monkeys (there are more kinds of monkeys), crocodiles, boa constrictors, pythons and snakes of all kinds, walking sticks almost as big as one, bats (some with two foot wing spans), tree sloth's and sharks, whales, jellyfish and the incredible variety of life that lives in the tropic oceans; one could go on and on, if it lives on planet earth, it is probably in Costa Rica, in one form or another....

 A few of the many varieties of hummingbirds in Costa Rica

 
The world's smallest bats, only a couple inches across sleep on this tree along the river during the day.

The dark outline of a Howler Monkey resting along the rivers edge can be seen as well.

Supposedly the only bird in the world without natural oils in its feathers, it has to dry out between dives for fish. (I don't have its name!)

Also along the waters edge were Caimens (spelled wrong no doubt, but small alligator like lizards), assortments of other different kinds of lizards including iguanas resting in trees everywhere. Again the variety, complexity and beauty of the plant and animal life in Central America is hard to fathom, let alone capture in simple photographs or words; one needs to experience it for oneself.

I often think of John Muir, the famous botanist and naturalist that along with a knapsack and a loaf of bread, walked out west to study it, later convincing Washington and the politicians the need for National Parks and preserving wilds like the Redwoods before it was too late. One of my heroes, not only for his passion for the wilds and preserving them, but his ability to go lightly into them, taking very little with him, yet finding ways to forage and thrive while in there. And as he put it, "live like a king in the wild with the abundance of natures gifts, while living in the splendid beauty that also is part of god's gift to us": 21st Century men and women have so much to learn from this philosophy...and reality.

One might argue we may not fully be healed as people without wild places to go to and reconnect to the health and vitality which nature represents. This vital "life force" in which we seem to get cut off from more and more each day as another shopping mall goes up, or more raw sewage and hospital supplies get dumped into our oceans, is more than just vital for our existence. It is like John Muir himself tried to tell us; without it we may exist, but without embracing, preserving or understanding our deep spiritual connection to all things wild, we shall surely spiritually die. We will as we have let many of our societies make us, be part of the walking dead. We have lost our profound and deeply connected place in the universe. For indeed if as CSNY told us, "we are all Stardust", shouldn't we all know this, not just believe it?

One of John Muir's dreams which he never was able to do was walk down to the Amazon. As a botanist Central and South America represented the "Holy Grail" of all plant life on the planet. And he could have spent the rest of his life exploring it, but became too sick later in life to make the trip.

This richness and diversity is something one begins to see for real as one explores Costa Rica. It is still here, and Costa Rica has been smart in making some 23 National Parks or so; It is as if California decided to add another 20 Parks. It ties up a lot of land and makes Costa Rica a sort of Disneyland with National Parks, dependent on tourism to generate its economy with protected lands that require fees just to enter. One might have to pay to even walk up to see a waterfall on a trail, something inconceivable in the U.S. unless one is in a National Park and has had to pay to get in.

Its wilderness is a little too controlled for my taste, especially having lived in Alaska. But this type of reality seems to extend around the world. Either land is exploited and raped and polluted, or it is overly controlled and exploited for its beauty through tourism. Both are sad realities in themselves. The days of the mountain man, where like John Muir, one could just go out and live alone in solitude in unpolluted beauty, or uncontrolled lands are fast coming to an end (I know some of this is romanticism, most lands have thousands of years of human history associated with them, but one wonders if human history, or the planets, have ever faced such population density, pollution or overall challenges they now do). A sad testimony to our stewardship; something Native Americans have also known and felt the results of.

So a small tribute to John Muir, and perhaps Native Americans who according to new evidence could have been in the Americas for as long as 35,000 years. Also a suggested possible solution for the rain forests of the Amazon, maybe like Costa Rica, it should be turned into a giant National Park with the entire world helping set it up, patrol it and giving land and proceeds to local indigenous populations to preserve their land and way of life. Unchecked capitalism has always been natures worst enemy; like Costa Rica it could provide some solutions as well...

I hope as Adventure Logs continues to evolve and perhaps more writers contribute, and more adventures are completed, part of its purpose will be to raise awareness of the planets plight, the natural world as well as humans, and perhaps at best offer a few solutions and inspirations to transform ones own world, inside and out, and in so doing continue transforming the planet. Or at worst, provide the arm chair traveler a way to experience new things....while providing a few laughs at my attempts at divine understandings.

                      10,000 monks chuckle.....

                Good travels, and good awareness....