Akira:
Thank you!
I had greatest fun putting the book together because I did take an enormous number of photographs while I was in Costa Rica so had plenty to choose from for the book.
Getting to Costa Rica was a very different matter though:
Costa Rica lies on the isthmus between North and South
America. It has tropical lowlands (on both the Atlantic and the
Pacific coasts) and ranges of central mountains which rise 12,500
feet through a rain forest to the cloud forest above it. As a result
of this diversity, Costa Rica is home to an enormous variety of
wild plant and animal life. The country is consequently a dream
destination for photographers who hope to capture images of
these wonderful, and sometimes quite rare, creatures.
Getting to Costa Rica proved to be rather more difficult than I
had imagined.
First, my flight from New York was canceled by the airline just
hours before take-off. This was apparently due to a snowstorm the
previous day which had left them with crews and aircraft scattered
across the country in the wrong places.
Frantic phone calls to every airport within 100 miles finally
located a single seat on a flight to neighbouring Panama from
which I could take a flight back to San José in Costa Rica. It was
an expensive Business Class seat but it was a seat on a flight going
in roughly the right direction so I grabbed it.
We had only been airborne for about an hour when a passenger
just a few rows in front of me experienced a heart attack. Doctors
on board were summoned and oxygen cylinders were brought
forward but to little avail so we made an emergency descent to
Raleigh, North Carolina where an ambulance met us and took the
afflicted passenger to a hospital which hopefully could help him.
So now we could be on our way again? And have dinner which
had not yet been served? Unfortunately not! All of the oxygen
cylinders had been used and airline rules insist on there always
being spare oxygen cylinders so everyone (and all of their luggage)
had to leave the plane.
The airport was in total darkness but the crew was able to find a
trolley laden only with water and candy. So dinner-less and hungry,
there we all sat … and sat… and sat.
Then we heard that oxygen had been located but it was in a locked
warehouse. Someone was looking for a key.
Great! So soon we can be off ?
Unfortunately not quite yet because we still needed to wait for
someone to come from his bed to man the control tower.
That was eventually accomplished so now we could go?
Well not yet because now one of the crew has exceeded her permitted
hours on the job and she has to be replaced.
Finally at dawn we were allowed to board a different plane but the
very long delay meant that we had arrived in Panama too late for
me to make my connection back to Costa Rica.
Several more hours passed before I could resume my journey to
Costa Rica. So where were my two suitcases? Not in Costa Rica
it seemed. Never mind: the airline would find them and would
deliver them to me.
Meanwhile the taxi (which my host had kindly arranged to take
me to join four other photographers) was waiting to drive me six
hours north (near the border with Nicaragua) to the lodge where
we would all be staying.
We set off and drove towards the Mount Poàs volcano. We had
almost reached the pass when we found that the road had been
closed due to an accident. Back down the mountain we drove
again and took the other less scenic and more congested road to
the north. The journey was interesting but a bit silent because my
driver spoke Spanish and I unfortunately don’t.
Eventually we left the paved highway and continued along a dirt
road. “Have we arrived?” Not yet — there is still another hour’s
journey ahead of us. Finally, at dusk, we do reach the Lodge where
the taxi driver leaves me before starting his six-hour-long return
drive through the night to San José.
With no suitcases I am attired for the tropics in a high-necked
woollen sweater that is more suitable for the snows of New York.
I have no tripod but fortunately I do have my cameras and lenses
because those always travel with me as “Carry-Ons”.
(My missing suitcases did eventually arrive but not until two days
later although, thankfully, a very kind and thoughtful fellow photographer
lent me a cotton shirt to replace my woollen sweater.)
So now, finally, to start photographing. The Laguna del Lagarto
Lodge and its surrounding grounds are home to exotic toucans,
curassows, parrots and song birds in all the colours of the rainbow.
There were also beautiful but exceedingly venomous snakes, strawberry
poison-dart frogs, coatis, nectar-feeding leaf-nosed bats and
iridescently-feathered humming birds of different species.
Paradise indeed — but I had reached it only after the proverbial
“Journey through Hell”.
