Pura Vida: a new stamp in my passport

My most recent adventure was a trip to Costa Rica with a two-fold purpose: to have a mini vacation in-between quarters, and to see & encourage a friend who lives and works there. I'll grant that the above photo is not what one would normally think of for a vacation photo, but it was one of my favorite spots: the La Paz Waterfall Gardens. We didn't stay there--it's very posh--but you can visit the waterfalls and creature exhibits without being a hotel guest. I have other photos of steps and walkways for landscape architecture ideas--some people take travel photos of people. I take travel photos of rocks, railings, and bugs.

The butterfly sanctuary is breath-taking, almost literally. The interior is full of natural light and very warm and steamy to provide a good environment for the butterflies and the plants they need. There are stands holding ripe bananas and guavas for them to snack on, lots of lantana and other plants, and signs explaining the twenty species and the plants they require. Most amazing are all the gorgeous butterflies fluttering around. One brushed past my cheek. Another brand-new one landed on my friend and didn't want to get off her arm.

The butterflies seem to know they are inside. Even though the windows were impermeable, they hovered around the windows as if they wanted to get out. I didn't see any 'butterfly paintings' in Costa Rica like there are in Cameroon (i.e. pictures made of butterfly wings: very lovely, but very sad). Nonetheless, even though Costa Rica apparently does a good job in habitat conservation, there is still less land for butterflies. Weather, such as the 1987 El Nino, also can do in a species. Because of this, the butterfly sanctuary raises butterflies through the entire life cycle, hence the chrysalises above. They find where the chrysalises have formed and carefully pin the bit of leaf or whatever to the sticks, sorted by species. The added advantage to not having chrysalises stolen or stepped on is that visitors can watch butterflies emerging!

Did you know that butterflies emerge with their wings all wrinkled up? They have to struggle out of their chrysalis shell in order to pump blood-fluid through their wings to open them up. Then they hang & hover for a while, letting their wings dry out. If you help a butterfly out of its chrysalis, the wings will remain wrinkled and it will never fly. Besides, their wings rub off onto our fingers and that damages them, too.

Here is a photo of an emerging Myscelia cyaniris butterfly:

Below are two photos of the Morpho peleides limpida "Blue Morph" butterfly:
Camouflage side
Iridescent side

City of (our Lady of the) Angels

I'm not an Angeleno: I don't live in Los Angeles. I don't even live in LA County, although it is just 100 yards to the north. I don't think LA looks like a city where angels live and i don't think it looks like a city where Mary, the mother of Jesus, has much influence. Nonetheless, i do find it kind of fun to take the metrolink downtown and hop on the subway to go to the library and have cheap ice cream & great Lebanese food at Grand Central Market while i'm there. There are lots of nifty buildings to gawk at: Grand Central Station, Olvera Street, the Bradbury, the Biltmore, the DWP...

This is a view of the Bunker Hill area from the DWP building. The shiny building is Walt Disney Concert Hall and the tall colonnade building on the far left is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I don't know the names of the other skyscrapers.

Since two of the summer's projects involved redesigning a park in downtown Los Angeles, we had several field trips out there. I'd been on a walking tour given by the Los Angeles Conservancy when i was a lot younger, too. I talked about LA a lot, and one of my friends wanted to see what downtown was like, so we went yesterday to walk around. I took her everywhere my professor took us except i forgot the new cathedral. How did i do that!? I thought it was one of the friendliest buildings downtown, and i really liked the architecture and the tapestries. Oh well. Next trip. I also didn't take her down the government building section, because it was hot (over 100F) and my feet hurt. Somehow, even wearing flip flops, her feet didn't hurt until we sat down on the train to go home!

The cathedral is probably my current favorite downtown building, right before the Bradbury. The stone is a warm color, and the building is thoroughly modern in shape although ageless in function. I like all the tables with patio umbrellas too. The Bradbury is the kind of office building i would build if i was going to build an office building--a huge skylight for a roof, and beautiful wrought iron, so that you don't even really feel like you're inside. I guess it had been used for lots of movies but i haven't seen any of them.

The Millennium Biltmore is lavishly decorated and wonderfully hushed inside, even when lots of guests are coming through. My friend and i saw someone famous, but we don't know who it was--a musician of some sort who must be a regular guest because a desk person said "Nice to have you back, sir." And everyone is polite--even though i wander around downtown in rugged sandals and a straw hat, they've politely answered my questions about the tours (LA Conservancy does them) and they don't turn up their noses. Very elegant. Someday i want to dress properly and have afternoon tea in the Rendevous Court.

And then the library. It's air-conditioned. There are drinking fountains in mosaic-covered recessed nooks. The bathrooms are clean. There are comfy reading chairs, well-lit study tables, and tons and tons of books. It's also a nifty building, going down into the ground instead of going up, and a large atrium of natural light brightens all those subterranean floors.

Tuolumne Meadows

This was a tiny islet in the river/creek that runs through Tuolumne Meadows and the nearby backcountry. There hadn't been a lot of snow this past winter, so the river wasn't very high; the island was about two feet above water level. It's wooded with lodge pole pines (Pinus contorta). One in the middle is taller and thicker than the rest, but it looks mostly dead. Maybe an old fire burned it or lightning struck it and the rest--all about the same height and i have no idea how old--have grown since then. The undergrowth is wild onion (smelling it made me hungry!) and two other plants i can't yet identify.

I sat on the bow of the island to sketch for several hours on a comfy seat of roots and large granite stones, with the sound of the river and my classmates and the warm sun and a cool breeze...it was a lovely day, far from the very crowded Yosemite Valley that most everyone else visits. I must say though, it doesn't very much feel like 'wilderness' when you're only a 45 minute hike from a road and other hikers pass through to other parts of the park.