beauty in decay

As tiny as the country I now call home is, there are many places I have yet to visit.  I've been parasailing in the Pacific, canopy touring along the Caribbean, seen opera in the Teatro Nacional, gone drinking in the capital, melted in the heat of Golfito, walked along the abandoned native ruins of Guayabo, and of course I have seen my share of active and inactive volcanoes, lagoons, rivers and national treasures.  I still haven't seen the turtle hatching grounds, the haunted asylum, the abandoned island prison, caves with eyeless fish, but all in due time!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of going to San Gerardo de Dota, a cloudforest mountain town with a tiny population of about 200 people.  It was the very definition of the boonies.  As we entered some trails, I couldn't help but feel like I was walking through a foresty trail in Washington on a rainy fall day.  My sense of nostalgia was only deepened when I found cluster after cluster of beautiful, untouched fungi.  I was reminded of my autumn walks through a foresty area behind a cemetery, just minutes away from my former childhood home, where I used to wander, looking in awe at various types of fungi springing from decaying piles of forest matter.

On our walks in San Gerardo, I found dozens of types of fungi, some normal, others bizarre, but all beautiful.  Then, we stumbled upon the goth queen of all fungi; a curling dark fungi that I could only decribe as a smalk black calla lily devoid of a pistil in the center.  

To see more awesome fungi from our trip...
click here and here

UPDATE: after nerding it up for a lengthy period of time, I can now identify this lovely fungus as Craterellus Fallax, also known as black trumpet, and, my personal favorite, trumpet of death.  Hooray for the internet!