Nicaragua 3.0

And so another adventure begins...Nicaragua for 3 months with the hopes (misguided as they may be) of finding and ''studying'' some birds. If I'm lucky I may even get some sort of degree out of it but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. It's what we like to call a ''good experience''.

Despite the ridiculous amount of stuff we had to bring with us, we made it through security and customs with few problems. Security only questioned us once about the strange electronics we were carrying. Nothing like radio receivers to throw them off their game. Miami was not horrible, but of course they save to good stuff for the trip back. Still, they could seriously work on the coffee availability in that airport. How's an addict to survive??

Surprisingly, our luggage showed up in Managua at the same time we did. What are the chances of that, really?4 checked bags, pretty good odds. And so it seemed we were off to a fairly good start...

We spent the first night in Managua after taking the minibus to the hotel across the street. Yes, that was silly.

Dang, that's a lot of stuff...

The hotel...yup, seemed like a picture worthy thing at the time.

Christmas in Nicaragua needed a hug?

A Christmas reindeer, complete with sweet googly eyes at the hotel

Lili and Georges Duriaux-Chavarria came to pick us up the next day to head up to El Jaguar. However, first there was the small matter of cramming all that luggage into the car. It was quite the puzzle.

Not quite....

Eventually, everything was shoved in or tied on top and we were on our way.

Bienvenidos a Nicaragua!

The Office...

A few pictures while on the job.

Baby Juncos!!

Solo Mission

Over the hills to the East Side. What, what! A little weekend excursion if you will.
Can we take a moment to remember that it is nearly the end of June and there is still a ton of snow, particularly at the higher elevations. Yeah, it's crazy. Lakes are still frozen. Really? Where is summer?

On the other side.
Mono Lake! I do love me some tufas. For those of you that aren't on the up and up as far as tufas are concerned...they are the crazy limestone formations found along the lake shore. In addition to looking bizarre, I mostly just like to say their name. A lot.

The wind was whipping up the foam along the shore which was a new feature I hadn't seen before. Kind of fun.

The following day things calmed down, no more foam but nice reflections.

Green Creek.
Irises abound in the meadow at the beginning of the road. The road is a long winding dirt ordeal. Lovely and dusty. The best part is pretty much every vehicle I passed was some sort of large truck and there I am with my little bitty car. Nice.

Evidence of the beavers hard at work along the creek.

The road to my camp site...great...

Hiking up Green Creek to Green Lake.

And there's the lake...

There was a super sweet waterfall across the lake too but apparently that picture is M.I.A. at the moment. I'll have to add it later.

I attempted to continue on the trail up to East Lake but I ran into the snow line, lost the trail and after a couple precarious creek crossings decided maybe I should give up before something bad happened.

A few more iris pictures on the way out...