The past is fleeting and the stories, the sights and the feelings are perishable. One sees what one wants to see, and perhaps we are not capable of more. We saw that people are kind and helpful even if they were not materially rich. Some we could understand even though we didn't speak the same language, the motivations of others were incomprehensible even though we did. In the end fragments remain - the smell of roasting chocolate, a flock of snow Ptarmigians on snow, the creaking of the rainforest, the rough feathers of penguins, and the intoxication of Curanto.
So these are our stories. Every time you visit the site you will see a random post below. Each starts with Lo que pasa es que...
Jun 13th, 2007 by Shreesh
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Very Cute
Victory 8×20
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A consideration for birding.
Our trip to the Costa Rican rain forest made it quite clear that our current optics were woefully lacking. One day into the birding and they fogged up but good. Luckily(?) we did not see the resplendent Quetzal so we only had four letter words for our optics and not carefully crafted multisyllabic multiword phrases. Excellent quality, nitrogen purged bins are a necessity for the drive. I know what you’re thinking: Leica Ultravid and be done with it! Well, given our modest means we settled on the Zeiss Conquest Series 8×40 for all around clarity, ergonomics, and value.
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Have you studied what birds you are likely to see? There is lot of excitement if you can name the bird on sighting & studying it,s habit & habitat. Also the females of the species & juveniles also look very different.
Having taken a good bin, you may also like to study , apart from birds, the plants & flowers seen along the drive. You may also find it interesting to observe geology along the road.
We do not know much about the species other than the famous ones like Quetzals, Toucans, Macaws, etc. One of the amazing things is discovering new and interesting species we hadn’t known before – like the Wattled Bell-Bird in Costa Rica or the Pels Fishing Owl in Bostwana.
Finally we have some reasonably decent equipment to hopefully concentrate on observations rather than fiddling with the gear.