Quick look back at a trip we made to Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.

Back in 2010 Salwa and I had an opportunity to stay at a “resort” near Corcovado National Park on the Southwest Coast of Costa Rica. This trip would mean a flight into San Jose, a second “white knuckle” flight to Puerto Jimenez and then an hour and a half 4x4 ride to the Pacific coast and the Bosque Del Cabo Rain Forest Lodge.

Relaxing in the garden cabin at Bosque Del Cabo, in the Osa Peninsula.

Unlike most of our trips, we were going to be staying in one location and doing small day hikes out around and through the rain forest trails. This was also going to be the first photo trip for me that would revolve around almost entirely nature photography.

The way in to the Lodge was a bit of an adventure in itself. We were weighed along with our luggage before getting on a small prop plane and then took off over the mountains towards a small landing strip with a dirt road and a couple of dogs roaming around. A 4x4 picked us up for the next stage and off we went through the little town with one store, a gas station, a few small houses, and past farm land that seemed to be growing more rocks than anything else. The dirt road narrowed and started to push across dried river beds and then into a more lush rainforest environment where we were dropped off at the common area of Bosque Del Cabo.

Common area, kitchen and dining. Everything outdoors, but the chef they had brought in made every stop here worth while.

Salwa had found this location through some boating friends whose kids had built the lodge. It came highly recommended and the first sight of this place was special. While not a typical 5 star hotel, this Eco Lodge had excellent amenities. The juxtaposition of luxury and back woods was in-line with our ambitions.

Luxury in the rainforest with a view that can’t be beat.

The Lodge is on the Southwest corner of the Osa Peninsula and has more than 700 acres of rainforest to explore. Our first night we splurged and stayed on the ocean view cabin that had to be pretty much the most beautiful view from a bed that we have ever seen. Looking over a 500 foot cliff onto the Pacific Ocean, we were greeted with beautiful sunrise and sunset along with the sight of Scarlet Macaw flying below us.

The view from our pacific view cabin. A glass of wine or beer and we could sit here for hours watching time pass us by.

The rest of the week we stayed in the garden cabins located a few hundred yards into the rainforest in a 10 acre garden with each cabin facing directly into the rainforest where we would watch the monkeys swing by our room. The cabins were set up with one wall, a bathroom in the back and open view on the other three sides. The bed was sitting in the middle with a large bug net over it that Salwa insisted I inspect for ‘critters’ before she sealed herself in by tucking the bug net under the mattress. You might say this was open air camping but definitely a very luxurious form - glamping before that was even a thing.

Garden view cabin with outdoor shower and views in almost any direction.

Nature Photography 101 - What I Wish I Knew Then

The trip itself was a huge learning experience for me in terms of nature photography. We were still in the early days of digital SLRs and I had just gotten a new Canon 100-400L lens to put on my Canon T1i with a whole 15 Megapixels of crop sensor goodness. This was also the trip that I learned a lesson about backing up your pictures…but I’ll get to that later.

Howler monkey, one of many that we heard that morning in the distance.

Every morning after a hearty breakfast at the common hall we would grab our cameras and head on on a hike either through the jungle trails or down to the coastline. We could last about 3 hours in the heat on these hikes before we needed to be back to grab more water and food. At 35 degrees and 100% humidity we were constantly wet and would just replace our current sweaty cloths with ones that we had hung up earlier that were slightly less hot and wet. Each hike took us to a different area, sometime we would be wandering towards howler monkeys, other times we would be looking for poison dart frogs in the undergrowth or whatever birds were passing through.

Roadside hawk no where near a road at this point.

Looking back to the things we learned there, both Salwa and I see so much in our photography that we didn’t do well. Composition was lacking, tracking our subjects was difficult with the equipment we had and our lack of experience. Taking shots in the undergrowth of a jungle is difficult even now with cameras that can deal with much less light, but reviewing these shots just makes me want to go back and do it again. Part of looking back on these trips in nostalgia, part is looking forward to what we would do next in our travels.

The long hike down to the coast was well worth the climb back in the hot sun. We explored the tidal pools until we could go no further.

We also look now to see what shots we took and what ones we missed. On that note, I can tell you about one of the biggest lessons I had to learn the hard way on this trip. To start off, because the location was remote, we didn’t bring any laptops which I would normally download the day’s pictures onto. My camera only had one card slot and, of course, with the high humidity the one thing that could go wrong, did. Into day three I started to take some pictures and was presented with an error stating “could not write to card”. I tried to look at the pictures on the card but nothing showed up. I quickly put a new card in the camera and continued on with the hope that I would be able to recover the data once we got back to a computer. Unfortunately this was not going to be the case, even the forensic tools I had from work were unable to recover the data and I lost two full days of the trip. Lesson learned, dual card slots became one of the most important things to look for in a camera. The sad part was the loss of some shots that would have been some great memories and at the time shots I thought were going to be amazing wildlife shots. The Toucan and Scarlet Macaw in flight were ones that come to mind but also some great shots of Salwa that I miss now.

White face capuchin monkey family, tough shooting up into the canopy to get good exposure. Definitely a challenge for the dynamic range of cameras back in 2010…maybe even still now.

So what did we learn on the Wayback Wednesday?

Dual card slots good, heat and humidity are not my friend.
Costa Rica is a treasure and well worth going back to enjoy nature again and to maybe get some of those shots I lost or missed the first time.
Memories from these trips are worth looking back on once in a while, another reason to make a hardcopy travel book from each of these trips.
I can see the improvements that we have made in our photography and continue to look at what things I would like to improve as I compare shots from 10 years ago to ones from today.
We both really miss traveling and as soon as we can, we’ll plan our next trip according to the type of photography we’d like to explore.
New technology may not be everything, but you can really see the difference and I can tell how much easier it is to get the shot now as compared to then.

Thanks for joining me on this look back, let me know if you liked it and I might make Wayback Wednesday more often. If you are interested in the Eco Lodge please take a look at http://www.bosquedelcabo.com/