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Today was our day for Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve, Costa Rica’s first nature reserve. Beth and I got up around 7:00, quickly had some coffee, and went down to town to catch the bus to the Reserve. After a 15 minute bus ride, we got off the bus in the village of Cabuya (the town right next to the Reserve) to get some breakfast, then purchased some snacks for lunch. We walked down the main road through town to the Reserve gatehouse.

It was $10 to get into the park, paid at the gatehouse. The walk into the beach took about an hour and half, along a forest trail. It was a very scenic walk, but very hot. We passed by a couple brooks, went up and down some steep hills, and saw lots of trees and other flora. The beach was very pretty, but not very good for swimming. There were lots of small rocks on the beach and the waves were very powerful. I got a couple bruises on my legs from rocks being tossed into my legs by the waves. It was quite windy, so it’s quite possible the swimming would have been better on a calmer day. Needless to say, I only stayed in for a few minutes to cool off.


We spent about an hour at the beach before we had to head back to Cabuya and catch the last bus back to Montezuma. I got quite dehydrated on the way back. We brought 3 liters of water between the two of us; another liter or two would not have been a bad idea. I was a little foggy when we made it back to the gatehouse and signed out.



We walked back to Cabuya and ducked into the first marked we passed for some much needed water. I downed more than half of a 2-liter bottle very quickly. We waited for the bus back to Montezuma on a shaded bench in front of the market. The bus dropped us off at the bus stop in Montezuma, then we went back up the hill for a shower and to get ready for dinner. By the time we went down to town for dinner, I was feeling exhausted; My brain was not firing properly during dinner.

After dinner, I had to head back up to the hotel and fall asleep. Everyone else went out to Reggae night at Chico’s for a little while.

Woke up around 8:00, had a light breakfast and coffee at the hotel, then headed out for the day. Stopped in town for some snacks, then headed to Montezuma Falls. The first set of falls was an easy, 30-minute walk from the center of town. There was a nice pool of fresh water at the bottom of the falls and everyone went swimming. The lower falls was bout 40 feet high.

Next, we continued on up to the upper falls. This trail was much more difficult. The first part of the trail was steep hand-over-hand climbing. Then it leveled out for awhile before going, quite literally, straight down a steep rock slope to the upper falls. It was very steep, and potentially very dangerous of someone lost their footing or grip. There was about a 20 foot drop down a rock cliff, with nothing but a length of rope to hang onto.



At there upper falls there were a couple of pools to swim in and several places to jump into the water. I abstained from swimming, but everyone else went in. After awhile, I was ready to head out, but Beth, her sister, and her two friends that came on the trip wanted to stay. I walked back to town with another guest at the hotel who met us up there. It was a hot walk back; I was over-heated and hungry when I got back to the hotel.

I spent the rest of the day relaxing at the hotel. Had a dinner of pasta and meat sauce and a cabbage salad. After dinner, we went down to town to have some beer in the street. Went for a short walk with Beth on the beach, then headed back up to the hotel for sleep.

Do you need to keep your camera running for several hours (or days) but don’t have access to AC power for you adapter? I ran into this issue while planning a time lapse shoot of a tide cycle on the Maine coast. My shooting location on Friendship Island was over a mile from the nearest wall outlet on the mainland, rendering my AC adapter useless. A tide cycle on the Maine coast (the time the tide to go from full to low) can take from 5 to 7 hours, depending on the phase of the moon and other variables. My Canon SD-750 would burn through it’s internal battery pack in about 3 hours, requiring a battery change, which caused and undesirable break in the time-lapse.

I needed an inexpensive way to keep my camera running for several hours, without spending a lot of cash; I don’t make a living doing photography.

After some research, I found a solution using the following parts:
1. An AC/DC adapter for my camera - $30. NOTE: Depending on your camera, you may be able to find a cheaper adapter;
2. A 12v DC to 120v AC inverter rated for up to 5 watts - $5. You’ll need the type that plugs into an auto cigarette lighter power point. Since the adapter for my camera only draws about 1-watt, I could go for the the least expensive inverter on ebay. Basically, the more watts the AC inverter provides, the more expensive it will be (and the more power it will pull from our next component;
3. A portable car jump starter, with 12 volt DC power outlet - $30 to $100. Anything with an auto power outlet will do for running a camera. You can find these anywhere fine automobile accessories are sold, and the prices vary based on the number of cranking amps they provide. Spend more on your jump starter if your planning on running your camera for a week or more, spend less if you’re just going to run your camera for a few days. Also, be practical and get one that has enough juice to jump your car.

Once you have the parts, rigging it up is really simple:
1. Hook up the camera AC/DC adapter to the camera.
2. Connect the camera AC/DC adapter to the DC to AC inverter.
3. Connect the DC to AC inverter to the 12v DC power port on the jump starter.
4. Power on your camera.

If everything is kosher, your camera should power on as normal. If not, you know what to do. Here’s a photograph of my final setup for the the tide cycle time lapse mentioned above. Click the image for additional comments on the setup:

And here is the final product. I was very fortunate to catch the rise of a full moon in the frame of the camera, which was not at all planned:

For this time lapse the camera was running for about 9 hours. The jump starter has a power meter on it, which I checked periodically throughout the day. It only had 3 levels: high, medium, and low, but the entire time it ran the jump starter never registered below a “high” power level. Base on that, this setup could power my Canon SD-750 for over a day, and probably longer.

Some notes of caution:
1. Most manufacturers warn against leaving your camera running on the AC/DC power supply for more than a few hours. However, my anecdotal research has found that Canon cameras can be powered for several days without issue.
2. If your camera is outdoors for an extended period, use precautions to protect it from the elements of wind, rain, morning dew, dust, intense sunlight; whatever might be present in your shooting situation.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions using the comments feature

A sure sign that spring has arrived in New England are the yellow dandelion flowers that pop up in every open area of grass. Although pretty to look at, most people consider them weeds and will mow their lawn (or worse, spray it with chemicals) soon after they appear. I see them quite differently. As soon as I see them blossoming, I start thinking about one of my favorite spring traditions: making dandelion wine.

Preparing dandelion wine is a relatively simple process, especially if you’ve brewed wine or beer before, and an excellent excuse to spend some time outside on a sunny spring day. It’s not complicated and doesn’t take more than a few hours, less time if you have a helper. If you already make beer and wine, you already have all the equipment you’ll need; if not, you’ll need to invest in the basics (kits are available from your local brew store).

Here’s what you’ll need to but a batch of dandelion wine together:
- The wine brewing equipment mentioned above
- About 2 lbs of dandelion flowers (heads)
- 2 ½ pounds of sugar
- 1 can of white grape juice concentrate
- ¼ cup orange juice concentrate
- One packet of champagne yeast (any brand will do)
- Water

Finding a spot with plenty of dandelion flowers is usually not to hard in the early spring. Your own yard may have enough but if not, as in my case, office parks and other semi-public grassy spots are a good choice. A spot that has not yet been mowed since the snow has melted yields the densest crops of flowers. Also, and this is very important, make sure you’re picking in a low that is not created with any kind of herbicide / pesticide. This is rare, but just something to be aware of.

The best time to pick is a sunny day in the early to middle afternoon. This ensures the flowers are fully blossomed when you pick them. Wear cloths you don’t mind getting dirty; the blossoms will leave a yellow residue on your hands. When picking the flowers, pick only the heads with as little stem as possible; the white milky stuff in the flower stem is bitter and could foul the taste if too much is extracted into the wine. If you have a helper and a nice spot with lots of flowers, you can pick enough flowers for a batch of wine in about an hour. Again, you’ll need about 2 lbs of flowers, which is about 2/3 of a plastic grocery bag.

After picking, dump the flower heads into a 16 quart or larger cooking pot and add water until the flowers are submerged. Cover, and simmer for 1 hours. This releases all the nectar into the water. After simmering let the “stew” cool with the lid off of the pot for about an hour. While the dandelion heads are cooling, dissolve the 2 ½ lbs of sugar in water in another pot and sterilize your brewing equipment.

Once the dandelion flower stew has cooled enough to work with using your bare hands it needs to be strained into the fermentation container. We strained the liquid from the pot and the dandelion heads through a sock made of cheese cloth (we also use this for beer making) but a large stainless steel cooking strainer will also work. The cheese cloth is a good choice because it allows you to wring all the liquid out of the cooked flower pulp. We also re-strained the pulp with regular cold water to ring out as much of the nectar as we could. Below is what was left after the process was complete.

After the straining we added the can of white grape juice concentrate, 2.5 lbs of sugar (dissolved into a sugar-water solution as indicated above), and ¼ cup of orange juice concentrate. Then the bucket was filled up with cold water until it reached 5 gallons. After the brew cooled to under 100 degrees, I added the yeast, put the lid on the bucket, and added the fermentation lock. Although the color is initially pretty muddy looking, the wine will clear to light golden color, similar in color to champagne.

In a few weeks, after the sediment has settled to the bottom, I’ll move the wine to another fermentation container. Then it’ll set for another 6 to 8 months before bottling; I may move it to to another container one more time and add some pectin before bottling if it has not cleared up. After bottling, I’ll let it sit for 3 to 4 months then give it a try. If it’s good, I’ll begin bringing it out for drinking. Or I’ll let is sit longer; it only improves with age.

Today we had a record high temperatures here in Maine. Most of the southern part of Maine and New Hampshire were well into the 60s for much of the afternoon. Apparently this encouraged a record turnout for the New Hampshire Primary. Global warming? I’ll leave the official statement to the scientists.

As I left the office today during lunch, it was very bizarre to feel such warmth. I saw at least a couple people out outdoors in tee-shirts. The Fed-Ex guy was in shorts. Just one week before I was stepping out my door in the morning into temperatures approaching zero and hoping that my car would warm up before my fingers went numb. Sure, warm temperatures are nice, but it’s only January. I was hoping for at least a couple more months of winter weather.

What I found most interesting, however, is that many people were still out-and-about wearing their winter jackets, or at least clinking on to them as they went for their afternoon walks. It was as though they didn’t quite believe that it was 60 degrees out in the middle of January. That a cold front would move through in a matter of minutes, leaving them hypothermic and far from warmth and safety. I’ll admit that even I brought my winter hat and gloves along with me to work today, just in case.

Ironically, this week is the 10th anniversary of the Ice Storm of 1998. About 250,000 Maine households, my family’s included, were without power for two weeks, some even longer. The storm also caused significant property damage, mostly to trees and utility lines. It was one of Maine’s worst natural disasters.

Adding to my personal irony, the snow tires I ordered were also delivered today.

But fear not, sleet and freezing rain is predicted for Thursday night, and temperatures will be dropping back to normal over the weekend. Which is why the the saying about Maine weather will always hold true: “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”