Young couple standing on the sun-lit beach, their hands together with arms held straight up, lips touching in a soft kiss, the ocean caressing their ankles - a perfect moment.

The jungle is a jumble of vines - some high above the path stretching across to grasp something on the other side - the perfect highway for white-faced monkeys. Other vines wrap around towering, gnarled trunks adorned in ivy-esque attire so thick in places that the trunk hides within it. Others hang down, waiting for Tar...

Sitting on a hillside in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica, I look past the violet, yellow, and green homes with their red tile roofs to the pretty little town nestled in this verdant valley of hills/mountains.  Through the palms and tree leaves swaying in the brisk morning breeze, I see a peaceful blue sky with light, friendly white clouds that join their siblings until they form a solid gray mass at the mountain peaks – not a threatening, rain-bearing mass but rather a subdued gathering of chalk d...