Nature and Local History Stories

By Jack Ewing At about 8 years of age I started going with my dad on Sunday mornings to his skeet club in Greeley, Colorado. I was too young to handle a gun, but loved watching him and his friends blow flying clay discs called “clay  pigeons” out of the

By Jack Ewing In the August issue of Quepolandia I published an article entitled, If You Are Unfortunate Enough to get Bitten by a Snake, Do it in Costa Rica. If you didn’t see it the article is available online at www.quepolandia.com/category/jack-ewing/.So much new information has come to my attention

By Jack Ewing When I first laid eyes on the two black kittens a quote from a Robert Heinlein novel popped into my mind,. It has been so many years ago since I read it that I can’t even remember which one is was, but I remember the quote. In

By Jack Ewing “…and our dog Maggie has been bitten on the muzzle by a rattlesnake,” read the afterthought at the end of the email from my brother Rex. Knowing that the only poisonous snakes in that part of Colorado are prairie rattlers, I figured that Maggie would survive. These

By Jack Ewing Hunters in general and deer hunters in particular are one of the most serious causes of forest fires in Costa Rica, especially in the tropical dry forests of the northern Pacific part of the country. Every year during the dry season forest fires rage in many parts

Fiction by Jack Ewing At the edge of the trail a single paw print was outlined clearly in a small patch of moist earth. “El Tigre,” uttered Gómez. His burly hand wouldn’t cover the track, even with outstretched fingers. “I told you before, it isn’t a tigre, it’s a jaguar.

By Jack Ewing “Would this be a good place to put the net?” I asked Otto. “You said you wanted an open path through the jungle.” I stepped into the shallow water of the narrow stream. “I can take one end of the net to the other side and hold

by Jack Ewing Back in the 1970s Diane and the kids and I lived in the casona, the old Hacienda Baru home. We didn’t get around to digging a well until the early 1980s, and every year, the free flowing spring that supplied our water would dry up in mid

By Jack Ewing Every place in the world―from the polar regions to the deep ocean, from the streets of a big city to the tropical rain forest―has its own particular hazards, of which you need to be aware. If you live in the city you learn about the dangers there

By Jack Ewing Most of our clients at Hacienda Baru Lodge come here by way of the coastal highway which takes them through all of the oil palm plantations beginning in Parrita and extending a total of 40 kilometers all the way to Portalón to the south of Quepos. I

By Jack Ewing The Season is Here for Bird Watching Fever The patter of raindrops lightly pelting the leaves far above our heads was the first warning of a change in weather. It would take a minute or two for the rain to filter down 50 meters, through the layers

By Jack Ewing “There used to be so many of them that the branches of the trees would sag with their weight,” commented one old timer. “They used to love a big old kapok tree on Hacienda Barú near the road to the beach. It was hollow and some of

By Jack Ewing Back in the 1980s, the economy in this part of Costa Rica was still driven by rice farming and cattle ranching. Tourism was something we all knew would come later, but nobody had a clear picture of how it would work. In 1986, the government paved the