Costa Rica, or more accurately the Republic of Costa Rica, was declared the greenest country in the world in 2009 by the New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index. The country also scores highest among Latin American countries on the Human Development Index and was the first country in all the Americas to ban recreational hunting. And the government has recently announced plans to make Costa Rica carbon-neutral by 2021. (Thank you Wikipedia.)

I am excited to be visiting this forward looking, environmentally conscious country for the next week or so. I am embarking on another Road Scholar tour, this one geared to budding photographers – Digital Photography in Nature: Capturing the Best of Costa Rica.  My visit begins tomorrow with a night in the capital, San Jose – location 1 on the map – where I will meet the group leaders and the other group members. I am looking forward to reuniting with Dianne and Carroll, friends I made on my Utah photography tour.

On Sunday we will shoot a waterfall garden on our way to the Caribbean lowlands where we will, among other activities, float down the Sarapaqui River in search of wildlife – location 2 on the map. The planned visit to a macaw farm sounds promising!

A few days later we will transfer to San Gerardo de Dota in the highlands where agriculture runs to trout, apples, plums and pears which sounds a lot like British Columbia – location 3 on the map. But we must first conquer the “Mountain of Death” – more about that later. San Gerardo de Dota is known for its excellent birding.

We will be on the lookout for hummingbirds and the Resplendent Quetzal. The photo to the left is a stock photo I’m posting in case I am not fortunate enough to capture one of my own. After all, it wouldn’t be fair to whet your appetite for a bird with the fabulous name of Resplendent Quetzal and leave you disappointed!

I hope you will travel along with me. I’ll be posting photos whenever there is an accommodating wifi connection. As always there will be a link on the website which you may use to unsubscribe should I bore you to bits. But I hope I won’t.  🙂

Now onward and out of this dreary Vancouver winter!