The Ecological Honeymoon!

Wow, its been nearly a month since my last post. We were off having fun on our honeymoon to Costa Rica. I'll spend the next several posts recapping our trip. We had a great time--and we are excited for our trip to Mexico at the end of the month. TD got the fellowship that he applied for, so he will be moving to Mexico City for a year. Thankfully I'll get to be there for most of August, and October-December.  We also just received our wedding photos, so there will be a big recap there too.

Ok, on to the pictures! For the first week of our trip, TD along with our good friend SR (who we will be living with in Mexico) surveyed a small privately-owned cloudforest reserve for reptiles and amphibians. We were near San Ramon, which is about 1.5 hours NW of San Jose.

We were very happy to upgrade to first class for our Houston - San Jose flight. Here we are in coach-TD is reading the camera manual.

With big backpack and our hosts for the first part of the trip, David and Evelyne.

Food shopping in the Super-Maxi mart (owned by Walmart!!).

Glorious tropical fruit--papaya, ladyfinger bananas, limons, mango, avocados, starfruit. mmm!! I am looking forward to lots of yummy fruit when we are in the DF.

Purchasing queso "Palmito", a regional specialty - similar to Mozzerella

The area surrounding the reserve is a combination of dairy farms and commercial nurseries - mostly growing Dracena or "corn plant". This is where the cheap houseplants that we buy at Home Depot and IKEA come from.

Entrance to the Nectandra Reserve. The reserve is named after a tree genus.

The Orange-Kneed Tarantula is a bit of a totem animal for the reserve, so it was neat to see a large female on the first day.