Today, we drove from the Caribbean towards north central Costa Rica, to our next hotel. Along the way, we stopped at a local food market to grab some snacks. The first picture shows fried chips made from Yuca(Cassava), and the second shows Taro chip, made from Taro root:

Next, we stopped at La Selva Biological Station, and here I will quote from Wildlife Planet Adventures “La Selva is an exceptionally lush ecosystem. It borders Braulio Carrillo National Park and is bisected by 2 rivers. It is the largest field station of the Organization of Tropical Studies (OTS) which itself is the largest organization studying the rainforest in the world. 68 Universities from all over the world run their graduate and undergraduate programs in tropical rainforest biology here.” For this tour, we had a specialist tour guide, so Mario was able to take a break and listen and enjoy, instead of lead.

However, of the things that Mario impressed upon us was that, before this was La Selva, this was a farm owned by Dr L. R. Holdridge, dedicated to sustainable forest research. This was the first of a network of private forest reserves in Costa Rica. As it turns out, the wildlife we would see throughout this trip were located not just inside government owned parks, but also inside private parks and reserves like this one. Without Holdridge, this station would not exist. A plaque commemorating this is shown here:

Here is a link to the web gallery of our visit to La Selva Biological Station. There are 34 photos here, and many of the animals are labelled at the bottom of each picture. Also, the iguanas in this gallery really are called green iguanas, despite their reddish color.