With the new year now fully underway I thought it was about time that I start putting some effort into my goals for 2024. As many of you are aware I have been engaging in photography for a while now and in that time I have been setting myself a goal at the start of each calendar year as a method for giving my work an annual focus.
One year it was to produce a calendar of my work, one year it was to sell prints at a market, one year it was to enter a competition and one year it was actually to create this website. Throughout the years these annual goals have given me focus, a sense of achievement and helped enhance my love for photography as a hobby alongside my daily life as a secondary school teacher. They have also managed to bring me a level of success that I never thought imaginable when I first picked up a DSLR camera in 2016. Since then I have seen my images receive awards in international competitions, I have been published in magazines and I helped contribute to a book about west London wildlife.
My goal for this year is to really put some effort into developing my website and make it more of an interactive space as opposed to an area that hosts my portfolio. The first step in achieving this is by writing a weekly blog post that covers what I have been up to in the world of photography, wildlife watching and travel. So, welcome to my first ever Seven Day Story!
Weekly Round-Up
As you are hopefully aware by now I have been out of the UK for a while, setting off on a huge adventure in September 2023 throughout Latin America. That part of the trip came to an end this week as we departed Costa Rica and arrived in the Caribbean island nation of Dominican Republic, where we will plan on staying for three weeks. We spent just under a month in Costa Rica and it lived up to its name as a haven for wildlife enthusiasts.
Travel
We started this week in Manuel Antonio, our final stop in Costa Rica but a place known as the most famous national park in the country. We stayed at a hotel just south of Quepos, amongst the jungle laden hills, called Makanda by The Sea.
Most of the accommodation that we have stayed in up until this point has been slightly budget friendly but given that this was our final stop (and final time with Catriona's parents who were visiting from Scotland), we found ourselves going a little more upmarket to finish. The hotel was great, it had one of the most remarkable swimming pools I have ever seen and it was absolutely surrounded by local wildlife (more on that below) and it was only a short distance away from Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio.
The national park is a terrestrial and marine protected area that was first established in 1972. It has since become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Costa Rica and, when we visited, there were huge numbers of tour groups walking the grounds. Aside from the wildlife the park is also home to some excellent beaches, with our favourite being Playa Espadilla Sur where we took a lovely swim.
After Costa Rica we headed to the capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, where we spent five very fun days. The city has some very interesting colonial roots having been under Spanish occupation. We decided to head out on our own, self-guided walking tour and learnt more about the city at the excellent Museo De Las Atarazanas Reales, which detailed the historical importance of the numerous shipwrecks found off the coast and at the Catedral Primada de América, the first cathedral built in the Americas. In fact, Santo Domingo was a city where many of the Americas 'firsts' were originally built by the Spanish colonists; the first hospital, the first university, the first shipyard.
We spent a day at the huge Jardín Botánico Nacional Dr. Rafael María Moscoso, a botanical garden named after the famous Dominican botanist, who cataloged the flora found on the island of Hispaniola (which is nowadays made up of the nations Haiti and Dominican Republic). We pretty much had the entire gardens to ourselves when we visited and they were absolutely beautiful. There were a number of different houses, with the fern section being particularly impressive, a Japanese garden, a walkthrough butterfly house, a lake filled with terrapins and waterfowl and a small museum.
The final, and probably most impressive, stop for us in Santo Domingo was the Parque Nacional Los Tres Ojos, or the Three Eyes Park. This small park is home to a large cave system that hosts three scenic underground lakes (ojos) and is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the country. The lakes themselves were absolutely spectacular and it actually was not actually as busy as we had imagined it to be when we visited.
Alongside the lakes were some very impressive rock features, huge stalactites and stalagmites, as well as a small boat that pulls visitors across to give access to a fourth lake which is not considered one of the three "eyes" or main lakes since it has an opening to the outside.
Wildlife
Manuel Antonio is one of the most famous national parks in Costa Rica because it is known as one of the 'easiest' places to see wildlife up close and we would definitely agree.
During our few hours inside we saw four individual sloths, including one who allowed me to take my best sloth photo of the trip! We also saw a huge troop of white-faced capuchins, with one momentarily trying to steal my shorts out of my rucksack, that included a large male and a number of youngsters. The beaches were littered with black spiny-tailed iguanas, including a few massive males as well as some of the biggest hermit crabs we had seen in the country. There was not as much bird life as I had expected within the park itself but we did see a few brown pelicans landing on the water just off the beach.
Away from the park, our hotel was surrounded by dense jungle and turned out to be a great place for spotting wildlife. Everyday we witnessed visiting monkeys; with a large group of mantled howler monkeys on the first afternoon, the smaller squirrel monkeys almost everyday and the occasional sighting of more white-faced capuchins (including some that took a quick dip in the swimming pool).
On the bird side of things the hotel had a pair of scarlet macaws that appeared to roost in a prominent tree every evening and their loud squawking could be heard in the mornings.
With Santo Domingo being a city it definitely had less opportunity for wildlife viewing but, with that being said, the botanical garden was home to a decent number of animals. As mentioned before the lake was home to a large group of Muscovy ducks, some whistling ducks and some absolutely huge terrapins (some of the largest I have ver seen). It was also a great spot to see reptiles, with some very big common ameiva lizards wandering the grounds as well as loads of smaller anoles (there are a number of different anole species found in Dominican Republic) scampering along the walls and rocks.
In terms of birds there were plenty to be heard but they proved slightly difficult to spot - the best view we got was of an endemic Hispaniolan woodpecker, that followed us along the path for a short while. The colonial zone of Santo Domingo had almost no wildlife viewing opportunities but we did manage to see a mongoose whilst walking around the Three Eyes National Park.
Other News
This week also saw the announcement of the results of the International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) competition.
Those of you who follow my work will know I have entered this competition many times before, mainly because it has a specific 'Captured at Kew' category for photos taken at the Royal Botanic Gardens. I have had previous success in this competition, winning a number of awards in said category and this year, despite being out of the country, I managed to enter a few photos.
Tuesday saw the announcement of the results and I was thrilled to learn that I had matched my best ever finish with my image of a grey heron being awarded as a finalist! You can check out all the winners here and the images are currently on display within the gardens for the next month. If anyone happens to be going, could you please keep an eye out for my image which should hopefully form part of the displayed collection - it's a bit of a long journey from the Dominican Republic to see it myself...