The steaming river, epiphytes, orchids, and bromeliads

After my week­end in San Blas and Isla Isabel, I went to Guadala­jara for “a series of work meet­ings.” Haha, a bit of a pri­vate joke there, but I did work some. I also had a real­ly nice week relax­ing and explor­ing a bit. The high­light of the week was the vis­it to the Bosque la Pri­mav­era. This is a pro­tect­ed area just out­side the city where at least one vol­un­teer has one of the best assign­ments. For­tu­nate­ly, tours for oth­er vol­un­teers are freely and glad­ly giv­en. Inside the pro­tect­ed area is an amaz­ing geot­her­mal­ly heat­ed riv­er, the Rio Caliente, or Hot Riv­er and a beau­ti­ful array of plants — even in the dry sea­son.

After swim­ming in a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring jacuzzi of sorts, we went around to a few dif­fer­ent areas and walked up a much hot­ter part of the riv­er to the Emer­ald Falls. I think the pic­tures will explain the name. Except for the bit­ing flies which only seemed to attack me when I was swim­ming, the day was prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect. I want to go back dur­ing the rainy sea­son when every­thing is real­ly in bloom, but the orchids were already great, along with a vari­ety of bromeli­ads, includ­ing a lot of epi­phytes, or air plants, which are a type of bromeli­ad. The air plants love the humid­i­ty of the air around the steam­ing riv­er, and so the trees arch­ing over the riv­er were com­plete­ly fuzzy with them.

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The city of Guadala­jara was also great, but I took only a few pic­tures as I walked around explor­ing. I’ll sprin­kle those pic­tures in here and there in the future. While I was there I was edit­ing the San Blas and Isla Isabel pic­tures and feel­ing a bit over­whelmed with pho­tos, so I was very restrained.