Rincon de la Vieja

 We went on a hike in the rain forest in Rincon de la Vieja volcano. The trail to the crater was closed since ol' Rincon has been too active lately, huffing and puffing and apparently killing fish in the streams. And besides a 16 km round trip is a bit too long for our boys. Instead we enjoyed the 3 km round trip and took almost 4 hours walking it, stopping to admire the nature and me taking photographs.

 First we had to cross Rio Colorado.

I wanted to take a photo of the boys and asked them to stand still for two secods. Not happening.

 Jungle view. We saw several morpho butterflies, blue, big fluttering mittens, but they were hard to catch with the camera lens.

 Mushrooms are great subjects for photography, they don't move. During our trip we heard thunder quite often, but not a drop of rain.

 Even though we couldn't visit the crater we saw a lot of other volcanic activity. Bubbling hot water,

bubbling hot mud,

 steam coming from underground,

 and more bubbling mud, frosting on the cake being the repulsive rotten egg sulphuric stench.

 There was a beautiful waterfall,

beautiful vegetation,

and happy kids running back and forth telling us what they saw. Tuomas had his magnifying glass and binoculars, but in addition to the morphos we saw only one frog, leaf cutting ants and a dead spider. We heard birds singing and probably some insects, too, but they were hiding.

 I realized from this picture that Risto has grown a lot! He'll be 10 in a couple of months.

 When we headed home from Rincon the sky was overcast, but we could see the whole volcano. Huge storm clouds were forming above the adjacent Volcan Miravalles. Gradually they moved over Rincon and then headed towards the shore. We stopped on our way home to admire the setting sun color these clouds different shades of pink and blue.

 I set up my tripod for one last picture and was lucky to press the shutter at the right time. Got it!!