Costa Rica: “ports of call” #2 (includes our zip-line videos)

– Rebekah deep in the Veragua Rainforest

Assyria was a cedar tree in Lebanon with beautiful branches,
    with forest shade, and very tall.
    Its top was among the clouds!
The water made the tree grow.
    The deep river made the tree tall.
Rivers flowed around the place
    where the tree was planted.
Only small streams flowed from that tree
    to all the other trees of the field.
So that tree was taller than all the other trees of the field,
    and it grew many branches.
There was plenty of water,
    so the tree branches spread out.
Ezekiel 31:3-5

Today I could probably write excessively about our zip-lining experience – including a couple of videos – and that would be more than enough! But I promised to blow through these new cruise photographs fairly quickly, so here we go!

Costa Rica was fun. Port of call was Puerto Limón, then we drove up into the Veragua Rainforest where we enjoyed the perfect balance of education and exploration and fun.

The zip-lining was especially cool because it took us literally into the canopy. These were massive primordial trees, hundreds of feet high. Then, eleven separate spans, some fairly short and some very very long.

First, Rebekah’s video:

Then, mine:

A spectacular photo collection:

I will share far too many images in this collection – but they will still only brush the surface of what there was to see and how many amazing photographs I was able to take.

Seriously, friends, if you ever have the opportunity to go into the rainforest in Costa Rica, then do. The biodiversity, spearheading the ongoing nationwide work toward carbon neutral practices, and the imaginative efforts supporting worldwide conservation are all worth listening to, talking about, and taking very seriously. Good stuff all around.

And, yes, I am very conscious of the fact that we cruised into port on a state of the art luxury vessel (m.s. Rotterdam), took a “comfortable” bus up into the mountains, stayed five or six hours in the rain forest, zoomed back to our floating hotel, and then steamed off again back into the Caribbean.