daniel grafstrom
level designer
2009 . Costa Rica
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My cousin Gabriel invited me to go along with him on a trip to Costa Rica with a travel company he was starting up. The trip fizzled down to just me and him somehow, but it was still pretty amazing. Allow me to show my twelve or so days there from the last part of March, to the first week or so of April.
Let's get out of here! Seattle (top left), Las vegas (top right), Phoenix (mid right), Getting closer... (bottom)
The first morning we flew out over the San Jose sprawl...
Across the Gulfo Dulce...
After landing in Puerto Jimenez we cooled off with a swim in the amazing bay.
Very early the next morning (think 05:00) we took a wild, bumpy cab ride up a river where we would hike 12 miles through the amazing Corcovado jungle. Early in the hike we came across an old ranger station, overrun by massive spiders with gigantic webs. This eight legged buddy here was about the size of my hand- and I have a pretty big hand. I should mention maybe a day or two before we went to Corcovado, a group of Columbian drug lords tried to do some business in the park, but were caught by the Costa Rican national guard (Costa Rica does not have an army). The park camp was on lockdown for the night, we never got any solid news on the events until days after leaving the park. That made the hike a little more interesting. Story here.
Follow your nose to the only Toucan hiding in the trees way up high.
One of the many buttress style trees in the jungle. The soil is shallow, so the roots have to shoot out horizontally, rather than dig deep into the soil. They are named after buttresses like those in grand churches.
I think this was just after our lunch break was interrupted by a wicked downpour- who would've thought it would rain so hard in a rainforest. Walking in that rain was pretty incredible, what a beautiful place. Here's Gabe deciding what to shoot.
After eight or so hours of hiking, we finally made it to the camp. Even exhausted, we had an amazing chance to tag along with a guide and some others for a night hike, just for fun. This is another big spider, also for fun.
This looks like a stick got stuck in a web, but it's actually something this type of spider makes. The spider is actually hiding inside the "stick". The more you know...
Uh, well this is a huge grasshopper.
This is a baby american crocodile, which the guide found swimming about in a riverbed. It started squawking for help, and then it's mother came shortly after, as shown by two beady red eyes slowly approaching in the water as a flashlight was cast on it. This caused two of the people on the walk to bolt up the side of the riverbank in an amusing instantaneous action.
You may have thought the spiders were over, sorry! This is referred to as a scorpion, but is technically an arachnid because it has eight legs, two of which are "feelers". The guide also touched this buddy with his finger. Hope you sleep well.
This is what you call a "Solid" Snake, because it has no legs. Actually, I have no idea what kind of snake it is. Around this time we had an amazing encounter with a huge pack of peccaries (think boars). The guide heard some coming (you can also smell them, they are quite horrible smelling) and told us to turn off our lights and stand still in the path we were on. The sound and smell of the peccaries intensified as they drew near us as we stood in the pitch black of the night. When they appeared to be all around us, we all flicked on our headlamps and sure enough we were surrounded! There must have been forty of them crossing the path all around us. Amazing, frightening, and smelly!
Stay cool, iguana.
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All content copyright Daniel Grafstrom.
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