The name is super-accurate. It’s wet all the time. The rainforest gets something like eighteen feet of rain a year. If you stand still for five minutes, a fungus will take root on you, guaranteed. The picture below, they called this a “light shower”. By the end of the trip all my clothes smelled like I had washed them, immediately shoved them soggified into a non-breathable garbage bag and then chucked it into a corner of the basement for a month – even the clean clothes. I was charmed by the optimism of the local villagers, hanging their laundry out to “dry”.

You know all your house plants? All those sweet little leafy friends of yours? Well, they’re from the rainforest and they’re big. In their natural habitat they are enormous and they look like they are going to eat you. Here, look, some leaves with a hand for scale:

And I want to apologize to the artists of Central America. I never really liked the artwork from there because I thought it was a little garish, a little overly bright. Seriously, you don’t have to use the colors straight out of the tube, mix a little brown in there, fer cryin’ out loud. Now, having been there, I admit I was wrong. They were painting accurately because everything really is like that. A lot of RED and YELLOW and BLUE, so bright it buzzes in your eyes. When I correctly name my plant ‘n’ bird photos, you shall see for yourself.

This trip can be summed up by how many times I said the phrase, “Holy crap, look at the (fill in the blank)!!!” Everything was so big or so close or so much more than I had anticipated. I am already planning my next trip there (turtle-hatching season happens in July) and I’ve only been back for three days. I highly recommend going to Costa Rica. It’s only a five-hour flight, it’s relatively inexpensive, and their number-one industry is tourism (number two, technology; numbers three, four and five, coffee, bananas and pineapples) so they tend to know what they’re doing. If you have any questions about where I went or stayed, feel free to email me and I’ll hook you up with all the details.

I’m sure I will have a million photos when I return. Start getting excited about that.

Addendum: I’m back. That did not happen to me. Still a phenomenal trip, though.

I made the kelp necklace before I had my “bigger, simpler, more garish” epiphany, so it is small, delicate and softly colored. But I had beaded it already, so I’m incorporating it nonetheless.

The top part is a large tube so that if it’s possible I can slide a thin strip of LEDs into it and they will shine through the glass seed beads. I’m creating a lot of semi-translucent and / or pierced and / or hollow elements in the hopes that some of them can be wired for light. I’m not expecting all of them to be, but I don’t know which ones will be feasible and which won’t, so I’m making a bunch of them lighting-friendly.

Seastars. Big, simple, orange, with reflective sequins. I’m making two more seastars in pink, and they will be slightly larger and have more reflective sequins.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of ocean research, and the thing I have learned about the shores and most coral reefs (which is where I’m basing my costume on) is that it is not very colorful. The rocks and the sands and the kelp and the seaweed and the coral is predominantly four colors: medium brown, bottle-green with some yellow in it, muted grape-purple, and sickly dusty pink. Mostly the brown and the green with a smidge of the purple and the pink. A jazzy yellow fish or a bright blue anemone pop up all over, but the majority is rather bleh. So the base of my costume will be brownish-greenish with brightly-colored characters scattered about. And I won’t be making any fish. I will have crabs, sea slugs, sea worms, the above-mentioned seastars, snails, anemones, urchins, clams maybe, and an enormous jelly. The closest thing I’m going to have to a fish is putting scales on my corset. It’s just everyone when they think of ocean think of fish, and there are so many other under-appreciated oceanic beasties that I want to highlight.

Speaking of one of those beasties, here are my barnacles. I put a pencil into the photo to give you a sense of scale.

I’ll keep updating as I create more pieces of this exciting ensemble.

That’s all fine, sort of. Until you turn the sculpture around and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE OH MY GOD GET IT AWAY FROM ME.

Why? Why, Mom? At one point she attempted to explain how it represents the artist’s rage at his treatment, blah blah blah, but all I could think of was a bunch of birds chowing down on the poop coming out of a goat’s ass and I couldn’t hear anything else she said. I would simply break it “unintentionally” but it’s expensive and The Moomins would be so sad, I can’t bring myself to do it. Now my father and I are stuck watching TV with this atrocity grinning down on us. But The Moomins is happy, so I guess that’s all that matters. And I don’t live there. That helps.

2. Eels! Specifically moray eels. They give me the heebie-jeebies because their mouths extend too far back, or maybe their eyes are too far forward and close to their nose, one of the two. I was watching a special on them recently and thought they had reached maximum creepitude but I was incorrect. Scientists were wondering how the moray eel pulled its food into its mouth and throat, and through careful scientific study it was discovered that the eels have a second set of jaws that pop out, grab the food and drag it inside which, I don’t know about you, is one of the most horrifying things I have ever heard. Want to see some video of it? Think carefully before you answer that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv2DkzOPBXw

Guhhhhhhhhh.

3. In honor of ten years of dating, I forced Cricket to express his love for me through a sparkly object I can wear on my hand. I love this ring. It’s big, it’s old, the stone is an antique cut, it’s platinum, and it’s got rubies (my birthstone) all around the edge set in gold. The first few weeks I had it I couldn’t stop looking at it, so my co-workers nicknamed me Gollum. And when we moved to our new offices this last week, A small Gollum figurine managed to make its way onto my desk. I took a picture of my ring with Gollum holding it. It just seemed right.

Okay. You don’t just put that sign in the water fountain, right? This implies that one, or possibly more than one, persons or peoples have attempted to cleanse their yewling felines in the water fountain. Right? I won’t lie, it made me want to wash a cat right then and there. Just grab any random one hanging around and SOAK IT ON UP, YEAH, SOGGY CAT TIME! Cats don’t like that though, so I didn’t. But I thought about it.

Two, I’ve been meaning to talk about this pumpkin festival I went to back in October. It was called the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze and there were a whole lotta pumpkins (not surprisingly). It covered the grounds of a fancy country home on the banks of the Hudson River. Seriously, illuminated pumpkins everywhere. My college classmate Jay Woods did the lighting design, so mad props to him – some of the pumpkins had candles in them, but many of the pumpkins had electrical lights because, hey, keeping 4,000+ candles lit is a hellish task meant for no man. It was indeed great, mainly because it felt like something one would go to in ye olden tymes. “Oh yes, Edward, let us venture into the countryside via carriage to look at the carved pumpkins strewn all over the estate. They have been lit with candles, it’s all very festive. We’ll drink mulled wine and then die of typhoid, etc.” Here’s the entrance.

I think there were professional carvers working for a month beforehand, but to create the full effect of OMGGOURDSALLOVER they had girl scouts and various other children’s groups carve other pumpkins that were on the lawn as you walked up. It was impressive to say the least.

There was an abstract snake shape over the entire left section that was guarded by ghosts.

The jack o’lanterns weren’t all on the ground. Whoever designed this came up with some really cool ways to use the pumpkins to their full potential. Like the corn and sunflower stalks.

And the beehive.

And the spiderweb.

And King Kong on top of a side building.

And these warrior-type figures. I don’t know if they symbolized anything, but they were neat nonetheless.

I had a couple favorite things. One was the sheep skeletons.

Another was the dinosaurs. Specifically the baby hatching out of the egg. I took a picture with flash and one without to show the full awesomeness of the egg idea. I suspect after seeing this you will make one for your front porch next year.

But my favorite thing was the intricately carved pumpkins, most likely using drills with different-sized drill bits as an integral part of the carving. They remind me of those Ukrainian painted eggs.

I recommend that if you’re in the New York area around Halloween next year, you give this a look-see.

2. Also pertaining to my work, I made a logo for a yogurt shop, and they asked for a repeating band they could put around the store as a chair rail, on the napkins, on the website, etc. So I designed one and it’s very cheerful. I’m posting this primarily because people are always saying, “Why is everything you design with the creepy forests and the monsters and the like? Don’t you ever want to draw a golden retriever puppy gamboling in a field of daisies?” Hey, people who say that, check it out. Happy happy yogurt in cups. Not even remotely macabre.*

3. There’s this artist named Adam, I think his last name is Ellis, and he has a delightful blog called Books of Adam which has caused me to snork my beverage more than once. He does portraits of people for about twenty-five dollars a pop, and they are really, really special. Here are some of my favorite of his blog entries:

http://www.booksofadam.com/2011/04/last-best-place.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2011/03/more-stupid-cat.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2011/02/mahalo-come-again.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2010/11/poor-stupid-cat.html

http://www.booksofadam.com/2010/10/there-are-no-facts-only-interpretations.html

And here are some of my favorites of his portrait drawings.

*If someone wants to pay me to make something with a puppy romping in a field I will more than happily draw it for them. I love puppies. However, if I ain’t makin’ paper I will draw what I want, and that’s insects and deep sea fish and skulls. So shush already.

Yup, yes it is.

There were a lot of the usual suspects at this year’s procession. Not that they’re bad, just expected. Like this lovely cow.

Some llamas and an alpaca:

A wee pig:

The tortoise that, due to all the foliage around him, unfortunately looks like he’s being served for Thanksgiving dinner:

A dromedary and a yak and a duck and that woman who clutches the fennec right up to her chest so it’s impossible for me to get a decent photo, they were all there.

There were two distinctly new additions to the beastie-parade. There was a macaque (oooooh) and a coati (ahhhhh).

But, as always, the real winners were the people of New York and their pets. Were there demented owners who insisted on putting bows in their dogs’ hair and pushing them them around in strollers? You betcha.

A guy brought his turtle to be blessed.

But the most impressive blessed creature of the day was the British guy who brought his…wait for it…jellyfish to church.

There are two of them. I circled them because, you know, they’re see-through and therefore difficult to spot.

A bunch of other people took a whole lot of stunning pictures that people emailed me all day. They are far, far superior to my photos, so please enjoy.

Three people ride on one elephant – the handler and two guests. To get up onto your elephant you have to go up a set of stairs, like the kind they have for small planes.

All of us walking through the islands. The Moomins and Drea rode on the promiscuous wandering-away elephant named Mashimba, the one I mentioned above, and Cricket and I rode on a large, 35-year-old male named Marula who has a soft spot for babies. He’s the one the orphan follows around all day. It’s just precious. Mishi rode on the teenage love-child of Mashimba.

To get to the islands, we had to go through water. The handler said, “Give me your legs,” so I wrapped my legs around his waist and that water came right up to my pant leg. If you look in the second picture, you can see the little orphan elephant holding on to our elephant’s tail. Awww.

The handler has a bag of horse snacks, and don’t think the elephant doesn’t know it’s there all the time. Marula kept flinging his trunk over his head and pinching his prehensile nose-fingers at the handler, like, “Gimme snacks! Do it now!”

Here’s what things look like when you’re on top of an elephant.

Here’s a great shot of Cricket and me sitting there looking like Hannibal crossing the Alps. We would make excellent royals based on this photo.

This is Mishi giving the little orphan snacks from the snack bag. Awwww.

After you ride you get to feed your elephant, which might be my favorite part, because you really get to feel the way the trunk works. It’s surprisingly delicate and precise for such a large, heavy column of fleshitude.

And then we got to pet the orphan elephant! So sweet! Drea’s favorite animal is the elephant, so she very quietly had a meltdown while petting the little guy. He was covered in wiry bristles all over and I could have pet him all day forever. Here’s Drea standing next to her elephant trying not to poop herself with delight.

The other extremely cool thing we did was swim in Devil’s Pool. What’s Devil’s Pool, you ask? Well, when Victoria Falls is in full water capacity, the water pours over in a great rushing way. However, when it is the dry season, the water quantity ebbs and at the top of the falls is a pool of water, right near the edge, that you can swim in and cheat death. Here’s a diagram I made to help.

I won’t lie – I was scared. But then when I got there, I realized that in order for me to die, I would have to exert quite a bit of effort. There’s a four-foot wide rock shelf right before the edge, and I would have had to climb out of the pool, walk over that and then fling myself into the crevasse. So as long as I followed the guide’s instructions, I would be fine. First, he had us paddle out to a little rock outcropping in the middle of the river. Then, in order to avoid the current, we had to paddle in a specific line right to the Devil’s Pool because if we drifted too far to the right, we would get washed off. Here we are swimming. Mishi likes this picture because we all look like ducks.

First the guide jumped into the pool to show us how it’s done (how it’s done: jump into the middle). I want to point out that he is wearing a bathing suit bottom, he is not going commando.

And everyone jumped in…

…except me. I slithered down the rocks on my ass, because I am a hero.

It was amazing. The water was rushing over us and around us and it wasn’t cold, but it was refreshing. I could have stayed there all afternoon.

The guide pulled us up by our armpits so we could sit on the inner edge of the rock ledge.

And then he held our legs so we could look over the scary falls into the water.

Here’s a video I found of some other people’s Devil’s Pool experience. It’s pretty much identical to ours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVFsiJBSQps&NR=1

That was all the crazy risk-taking I needed for, well, for ever, really, so the next day when Cricket, Mishi and Drea went rappelling and bungee-ing and swinging in an enormous gorge, I went as support and took pictures for them. The first time Cricket jumped with the combo-bungee-swing, he didn’t scream. When he got back to the top I asked him why and he said because it wasn’t really scary (!). I told him that made me sad, so he said he would do another jump and this time he would scream his nickname for me, which is Bucket. Drea videotaped it. My favorite part is when the pendulum part begins and the harness gets right up in his giblets. You can hear the tone of his scream change dramatically.

http://youtu.be/V7GlTS8o7bw

Alright, I think that covers everything. It was a fantastic trip and I highly recommend going to Africa to anyone. If anyone has any questions or wants to see any of the other 1,000 photos that were taken, please let me know and I will happily share them with you.

Skimmers! With juveniles! Skimmers are a neat-looking bird because their lower jaw/beak is longer than their top jaw/beak. They fly along the surface of the water and scoop things up with that long lower part.

Elephants! So many elephants. Along the river we saw a male elephant eating roots. Because of the recent drought, roots are still edible. This guy had great technique – first, he would kick the grass to loosen the root, then, using his trunk, he would shake the dirt off of it. Then he would eat. Drea got a video of the whole process:

http://youtu.be/ZO53JrV7p9Q

Other elephants: Elephant throwing dirt on herself.

Large troupe of elephants coming down the hill to drink, looking very imposing.

And look at the babies! We saw a ton of elephant babies. Literally, it was a ton. They’re very heavy animals. See, I made a funny there.

We saw a wee baby elephant drinking. They don’t know how to use their trunks at all until they are older than six months, so this little guy had to hunker down and bring his mouth to the water. Awwww.

I saw something I had never seen before and that I found fascinating: a clearly disabled elephant that was full-grown and functioning with a herd. You would think he would have been picked off by predators, but no, he was moving along with the rest of the group. I called him The Elephant Elephant, after The Elephant Man. Look, his spine is all jinky and his leg is wack and I don’t know what’s going on with his hips.

Bee-eaters! That little fellow who is flying by popped out of the hole directly above him at the top of the picture, the ones that’s only a tiny bit bigger than his body. It was amazing to watch him go in and out of there, getting food for his kiddies. To re-enter in he would fly-fly-fly and then fold his wings a nanosecond before he shot back in – perfect timing.

Other bee-eaters.

One of the neatest things we saw was a kingfisher pulling a hummingbird impression. In order to stay directly over the water, the kingfisher flew into the wind. Aside from the flapping, he didn’t move an inch. It was quite impressive.

And finally, spoonbills. They have spoon-shaped bills. I love it when ornithologists call it like it is.

So that was Chobe in Botswana. Amazing. It really is different to see the animals from the water.

When we got back to the hotel (at about four in the afternoon) we went for a walk and passed by a pond, where we saw something really weird. There were two or three trees full of weaver birds, hanging upside-down flapping their wings and shrieking.

Here’s some video Drea took:

http://youtu.be/L78qvzE0b6Q

One of the weaver’s nests had fallen to the ground. They’re really impressive up close. They don’t use spit or mud or poo, just woven grass. Mishi tried to pull it apart and she was astonished by how difficult it was.

The next day we found out there was a feeding in the backyard shrubbery of the hotel. Eight zebras and three giraffes live on the hotel grounds, and while they were wild animals, the hotel game warden had a special relationship with them. He was laying out large plastic containers of grain when we wandered over. And sure enough, at about 2:58, all eight zebras showed up for snakkies. And they had a baby with them (awww).

Zebra yawning. Looks like he has dentures, don’t it?

The little guy wanted some milk from his mom, but she was otherwise occupied with stuffing her face full of grain, so he sadly rested his head on her butt and waited while she slapped him in the face with her tail. It was precious. Drea got footage.

http://youtu.be/MHpm-vINHOE

And then, like a floating dream, the creamiest-colored giraffe emerged out of the trees. I’ve never seen one that pale. I thought it was so lovely.

It was kind of an idiot, because it just stood there. It didn’t eat or anything. It just stood there. Then…it picked its nose with its tongue! And Cricket got the shot! I was ecstatic. Finally I got my giraffe-tongue pic!

The giraffe’s pregnant mom was off to the side eating leaves off of trees, and no joke, we were standing mere feet away from her when she decided to drink so we got to see her go down into her drinking posture right in front of us. It was breathtaking, like watching an Ent from LOTR bend down.

Afterwards we walked back to the hotel and saw this insane-looking flower. I don’t know anything about it except that it huge and it looks fake and it is not.

But the real icing on the cake was when we went to the main building for dinner that night and a vervet monkey was sitting on the wooden roof. I had explained to Mishi earlier that they are often called Blue-Balled Vervets because their testicles are a festive shade of cyan. Now this guy was sitting directly above our heads which allowed me the opportunity to get this super-special photo.

Vibrant, aren’t they?

Next, we cover me being a daredevil for about two seconds and spending the rest of the time watching other people be daredevils, and then that’s it for Africa.