Just past sunset on Tamarindo beach. There was a group of young women in fancy tropical dresses waiting at water’s edge. Perhaps there was a seaborne soiree. It may be time to go back to The Lou but more Costa Rica at https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobcrowe/albums/72177720324696670/ and more to add in the next few days.
Tamarindo beach, where the day trip boats anchor. Dinghies shuttle the passengers to and from the beach. This one has seen better days. No way to tell whether it broke up here or out at sea and then washed in. It’s a bit of an exaggeration to call it a shipwreck but it still looks a bit scary.
Home yesterday. I’ll stick with these for a bit until I find some local stuff.
The kid’s spring school break comes up next week. We are taking Ellie back to our favorite place in Costa Rica. She’s been there a couple of times and just loves it. The scene here is sunset at Tamarindo beach. Flying to Dallas-Fort Worth this afternoon, overnight there, and then onward Sunday morning. It might be good to get out of the U.S. for a while.
I do some B&W work when I think it's appropriate for the scene. These trees grow in sand at the edge of the beach in Playa Langosta. High tide comes very close. How do they get nutrients from salty sand? I'm sure it has been studied but there was no one for me to ask.
Costa Rica sits along the Pan American mountain range that goes from the Andes to the Rockies to Alaska. There are lots of volcanoes, active and not. The effect can be seen on many beaches on the Pacific side, where tan to black lava flows have not yet been reduced to sand. Low tide brings interesting pools, with critters from very small, like tiny hermit crabs such as the one that unexpectedly showed up in our bedroom (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161256324502313&set=a.128314812312) to larger fauna, who don't seem to mind lounging on rocks.
We took a roundabout route from Seattle to the place we are staying in the Olympic National Park, Lake Quinault Lodge. Our plan took us to the ocean for some distance before cutting back inland to the rain forest. The Pacific coast up here is wild and desolate, with a few pullouts from the coastal road. This beach was wide and flat, damp and packed enough you could drive well out in a 4WD vehicle. The sky was clear above but a constant mist rolled in. That's the kind of optics I like in this part of the country.
There are more infrared pix I'd like to play with but, to make things easy, I thought I'd come back to some Pacific pastoral. This is part of the main beach at Tamarindo, taken from the edge of a restaurant. Outside of bigger towns and cities, it's hard to find a restaurant in Costa Rica that isn't open-sided.
Now in possession of a spanking new laptop, a thing of beauty and a joy until a better one comes around. Toward the end of our trip I went down to the beach on Playa Langosta with a tripod and some neutral density filters. This is a 10 second exposure of the surf and volcanic rock.
I'll probably post more pix from the trip until I have a chance to shoot new local material.
If I understand correctly. a red flag at a beach means dangerous conditions, strong surf or currents. It looks to me like the risk is terminal boredom at the resort at the end of Playa Langosta. I don't know if that is technically a river or estuary in the mid-ground but, with the tide going out, the flow at its mouth was swift. As best I can tell the place is popular with Central and South Americans, particularly Brazilians. Nobody seems excited by their visit.
