Ujarras and Surrounding Valley

This is a little waterfall we saw above the town of Ujarras. The town is in a beautiful agricultural area and this is above, close to where you start descending into the valley. Now the computer is acting up again. It won't let me type close to the next picture! It wants me to type here or next to the very bottom picture, so this is going to be kind of mixed up!










Now it has decided that I can type here so we will talk about the photo below. This is a bird, the varity I do not know. But it was sitting peacefully in a tree as we looked down on the valley from close to where the waterfall is. Don't you think it looks like some kind of hawk?





















This is another bird, the variey of which I do not know, but it is big and black, maybe some kind of a vulture. Sister Porter has a bird book and when we have been out with them, she has the book so we can identify the birds. Guess I'll have to get one of those books so we can keep track of the kinds of birds we see.










Many of the fence lines here are made of growing plants. It appears that they cut off the trunk and let it start growing again. This is a coffee plantation. The fence trees and other tall trees provide shade which they say the coffee needs. They say the soil is so fertile that even just sticks they put in the ground for a fence just start growing.












This is the ruins of another old church. This one is in the town of Ujarras. It was one of Costa Rica's oldest churches, dating back to the 17th century. As the other one in ruins, it had been destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt several times. Now they just leave the ruins for people to visit and call it officially Las Ruinas. It is in a parklike setting and is quite picturesque.








This is one of the trees on the grounds of Las Ruinas. It is a very big tree covered in Spanish Moss which is what you see hanging all over the tree.













This is another view of Las Ruinas. They have shored it up with interior and exterior framework so that less of what remains will fall down.













This is a field of the chayote squash that I told you about before. It is a squash but they don't let the vines grow on the ground. They train them up poles then let it fan out over a netting and the squash can hang down instead of lying on the ground. I guess it would be a lot easier to harvest too.









Another view of Las Ruinas.