Another sunrise over Osa bay.

An infant, his mother, and Elliot play on the beach at dawn.

Elliot and the infant's mother make tracks in the damp sand. The tide is just going out.

Elliot shows off a small fry.

Elliot shows off what has been his home for the last seven months. It's been all over South America, and was shipped from Columbia to Panama. Apparently you cannot drive from South to North America, because FARC controls a part of the country that it is unwise to pass through.

Kate is using her skills to make nice with Eliot, the son of a British/Kenyan couple who were camping up the beach from us. That's their Range Rover with a tent on it in the background. We were sharing Oreos at this point, which is always good for making friends.

I got up and rode the second wave I ever tried!

Brother and sister are both excellent surfers. For real.

Kate takes a mid-day siesta, post-surfing.

A bat colonized the top floor of the cabana we rented for two nights, when we'd had our fill of sand and howler-monkey wakeup calls. The bat was discovered while Kate was napping.

Kate was not all that pleased he was there.

A very large toad.

Osa: Ants, Flowers, Older Women on ATVs

Sunrise as seen from within the tent.

A fishing charter picks up clients on playa Pan Dulce.

Leafcutter ants marching in formation

Some unidentified flower.

Low tide.

The owner of the Esperanza bar, with her Jack Russell and a few bouquets, on her ATV.

Osa: Sunrise, Puppies, Skinks of a Certain Size

Sunrise looking over the Osa bay. This is about six o'clock or so. We had quick sunsets (since the sun went down in the jungle behind us) but really great sunrises every single day. We were awake for all of them, since the howler monkeys crowed an hour before sun-up without fail.

The water was perfectly warm, and the beach about half and half between blonde sand and pebbles.

More colors as the sun rises over the mainland.

We're looking across the bay, eastward. The water is a pretty placid piece of the Pacific.

Pelicans would divebomb for fish every morning at dawn.


Kate stands in the surf.
More sunrise.

A very cute stray dog. The stray dog density was perhaps 0.25 x D, where D is the mathematical constant representing the maximum stray dog density as achieved in Darjeeling. 0.25 x D is a lot of dogs.

There were many large iguanas and medium-sized skinks.

Osa!

Repacking our framepacks, going from Puerto Jimenez to Osa. Making sure that everything's well distributed and whatnot.

Kate models her 35 pound pack. Some things didn't fit, so we had to lash them to the outside.

It was a 50 minute flight in a Cessna Caravan... very small aircraft. They had to weigh both our baggage and ourselves before we got on, it was so small. The plane took us from the capital of San Jose to Puerto Jimenez, a small town on the Osa Peninsula.

Kate poses by the propeller of our tiny plane.

On the airstrip at Puerto Jimenez, another plane taxis for takeoff.



Hermit crabs! I'd crack open coconuts for them, and they'd go nuts.

See how close our tent was to the water line? At high tide the waves couldn't've been more the fifteen feet from where we slept.


Campfire on the beach. This was really the only night we bothered; cooking on the whisperlite was much easier, and when the sun went down we really just wanted to go to sleep.