We were warmly welcomed at the Lodge after our fun boat ride in. The cabana in which we are staying is perfect. We have lots of room, a veranda with two hammocks, a settee, and a chair, all overlooking the river that flows several yards below. At night, the howler monkeys didn’t actually howl. The sound they made was more like a Manatee breathing, and for those of you who don’t know that sound, somewhat like a horse when it breaths out.
For our first excursion scouting, we went out to some Mayan ruins. Old tablets had been excavated, and we were fascinated with them. You’ll be seeing a lot more when we post our galleries, both from our student and from Arnie and me.
Some of commented on how the writing in this tablet reminded us of both Maori and Tlingit art.
We headed on to some beautiful falls and a cool swim. On the way, we came to a larger village (maybe 500 residents) where the children had just been let out of school for lunch. We hopped out of our little van, and the boys gathered to be photographed. Then they crowded around our cameras, dozens of little fingers pushing buttons like crazy. I can’t speak for Arnie, but I think one of my images got deleted this way!
Most of the girls were shy and ran away when we wanted to photograph them. Once we showed them what we had done with the boys, some of them gathered together for photographs, some still hiding, all with cute smiles.
We stopped for lunch at the national park building. This was a small, modest building on stilts, but it provided cool shade for lunch for us as we enjoyed fresh papaya and watermelon and home-made burritos.
The walk up along a jungle path to Rio Blanco was lovely. We stopped first at a suspension bridge. One at a time here.
You can see how narrow the bridge is, and you can see two of our group “who chose to photograph” rather than cross the bridge! Hmmm. I wonder why?
We continued along the path to the waterfalls. Rather than photograph, we all went into the beautiful azure pool above the big falls and swam up to some shorter ones. We took turns going into the current, floating down then swimming out before we got to the big drop. One could rest in back eddies.
Some of us were fascinated by a swirl at the top of one of the drops. For me, it reminded me of liquid silver.
It was time to go, as we wanted to stop at another set of falls. These ones were lovely, but didn’t interest me as much.
What caught my eye was this scene as we went along the path to the falls. The back lighting through the trees and the subtle light on the water and rocks really spoke to me.
I should note that we have not had time to process any of these images. The only thing that has been applied to them is Margo’s Tweaks which we’ll be giving to our group this evening when we officially start the workshop.
More … sometime … maybe tomorrow! …
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