Steady Gaze

8x10 inches, acrylic

Oh good grief, I have been so sick sick we got home from Mexico.  Bronchitis, that led to such violent coughing that I lost my voice.  It's only now that my vocal cords are starting to work again.  The sound ain't pretty, but I can make myself understood, and the coughing is slowing subsiding.

So, yesterday I felt good enough to go to the studio and get out the acrylic paint.  My goal was to paint much looser than usual, something a little wild and colorful.  I rather like this lady, though I think I can push the loose and abstract look even more.  

Time will tell.

Tarahumara Woman

I see that I never posted any more photos from our February trip to Costa Rica.  I certainly meant to, but then the hard drive on my computer died, and then the repaired machine had to be returned to the shop to fix my iPhoto program and email.  And then we had another trip.

This time we spent eight days on a group escorted trip to central Mexico, including a train trip through Copper Canyon.  It was a beautiful journey, full of stunning scenery, and I learned more about parts of the country I had never seen before. 

This photo is of a young Tarahumara woman at Copper Canyon, weaving a pine needle basket. 

The only unfortunate part of the trip was that I somehow caught a really awful cold that settled in my chest.  The 8,000 + altitude and wood smoke everywhere didn't help my breathing at all.  I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the experience as much as I wanted because I felt so lousy.  Now my husband has caught the same bug.

But we are home now, and are able to rest and drink hot tea.  I'm sure we'll be OK pretty soon.

Costa Rican Critters

While Costa Rica clearly has plenty of familiar animals, cats and dogs, raccoons, cattle, familiar birds like egrets and pelicans, we also saw quite a few that we'd seen only before in zoos, or in other tropical environments like Jamaica or southern Mexico.

Man with traditional oxcart, historically used to transport coffee.

Iguanas are common. They're vegetarian, and clearly accustomed to humans.

I think this is a caiman.  We saw warning near streams and rivers to stay out of the water because of these reptiles.  They are smaller than alligators or crocodiles.

One river tour we took went looking particularly for crocodiles.  This 80 year old croc is seventeen feet long and weighs an estimated 1, 700 pounds.

We saw several sloths lounging in trees.  This might be a two toed or a three toed sloth, a couldn't see to count. 

For me the most fun was seeing monkeys.  There were white faced monkeys, like this one, black howlers, and tiny squirrel monkeys like those in the picture below this line.  We saw them often, even near one of the resorts where we stayed.  There they made a racket early in the morning, before it heated up, and threw coconuts on the tile roof of the building.

I have a small, inexpensive camera, and we often were walking in a group, so I missed shots of many beautiful creatures - iridescent butterflies, warblers with brilliant flashes of red, brightly colored hummingbirds, green parrots, and toucans with bills like hatchets.  It was a riot of movement, sound and color, and tonic to eyes weary of winter.