Day 2 - Meeting the group

 Last night I had dinner in my room, roast pork with something called Hominy corn.  

Hominy corn

I'd never heard of it, but google tells me it's 

Hominy is a food produced from dried maize (corn) kernels that have been treated with an alkali, in a process called nixtamalization

It tasted ok but wouldn't rave about it.  Would eat again.  I can confirm that like regular corn, it exits looking pretty much the same as it goes in.

I went to bed early and slept well til about midnight, and woke with a cracking headache and a mild dose of the runs.  The headache eased after some drugs were ingested and I eventually fell back to sleep until 8am 😳

I decided to take it easy today, I have two weeks of full-on photography ahead of me, so I figured a day slothing about was sensible. I cleaned all my lenses, emptied my memory cards and read up again on the notes we were given about rain forests photography and using flash.  It all seems very complicated, so I'm hoping I can get to grips with it.

I went down to lunch and had just parked myself at a table when I was approached by one of the other women on the trip, and invited to sit with them. Never easy meeting people for the first time while you are eating food - they had finished their lunch and were chatting - so I did my best not to slurp my coffee and spit my food out.

They are an ...  interesting bunch.

Rhona is South African now living in the UK.  Works for Astrazenica and was quick to let me know her view of anti-vaxers.  Apparently her brother is anti-vax and he's entitled to his opinion of course, but how many people has he killed by not being vaxed himself.  She's also gluten free.

Ali is from the UK, has just moved into a new house and left instructions for her husband to deal with various trades people coming to hang curtains etc.  She was on her phone watching her niece playing tennis at Wimbledon. She lost her game, but she's only 15, so pretty impressive to get to Wimbledon imho.  I barely know which end of the racket to hold.

She told us about flying business class with her daughter, and how they brought her the children's menu as that's what they had on file for her.  She's 25 now, but has obviously traveled business class on British Airways since she was a kid. How the other half live!!

Carole was the quietest of the 3, she has a new car that has only done 56 miles, but that's about all I know of her.

Ali knows Chris McLennan and has done a few trips with him, and her and Carole are doing a trip to Mongolia with him in October.

They all traveled business class and are all clearly rolling in money.  I'm not intimidated in the least,  and only slightly jealous 🤣

The hotel has a rather nice curved wooden edge to it, perhaps to act as a sound dampening device given the proximity to the airport?

This is on the 4th floor, and the space to the right just drops to the ground below. Seems a bit odd.

Tonight I met the rest of the group, Kenny, Jeremy (only 6 guests in total so it's a small group) and of course Guy (photographer) and his wife Cat and Paulo who is the "local" guide from Costa Rica, a biologist and photographer. Over dinner he was rattling off a dizzying list of the wildlife we might see.  I'm expecting that most of my photos will be of the branch the bird/monkey was sitting on. I might have more luck with the sloths.

The "make your own pizza" station at the buffet.

Early start tomorrow with breakfast at 6am, be ready with all our gear packed, camera with long lens handy, wet weather gear close by, and then on the bus to drive about 5 1/2 hours to the lodge on windy roads where we will spend the first 3 days.  

At the moment the road where we are going is not open, there has been a huge amount of rain and a landslide has closed it. They are working on clearing it.