Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Living fences of Costa Rica


After transiting the Panama Canal we headed north to Puerto Caldera, and then took a shore excursion up into the hill country of Costa Rica.


The roads are lined with these lovely living fences, which surround most of the farms. The reason for using trees, strung with three or four lines of wire, to fence the land is very simple – the ubiquitous termites don’t eat live wood. The established fences, lobbed off many times so the wire stays close to the ground, are mainly gumba limbo, but the younger in-fill trees are sometimes more flamboyant plants, such as hibiscus or poinciana – though not usually in full flower as shown here. Don’t you agree the whole concept is wonderfully paintable, along with the chain of volcanoes that forms the backbone of the country?


If you’re interested, there is a sketch of this volcano during one of its active periods in 2004 on a blog post from last year.