It was a fun little adventure going back through all my Costa Rica blog posts to find my best two, and in some cases it was difficult for me not to choose my favorite adventures and instead opt for the best posts. I have selected these three finalists:
Vipers and a Volcano: Apart from being one of my favorite posts because it includes my favorite photo I took on the trip: the close-up of the eyelash pit viper, I really like what I did in this post with attempting to educate my audience on the subjects I was discussing. I realize that I can get a little lost in my scientific jargon and forget that I have an unnecessary amount of knowledge about many things science, so it was often a conscious effort of mine to explain in my posts what I was talking about so someone who doesn’t know earth science or herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians) gets what I’m saying. Not only did I include relevant facts about pit vipers and stratovolcanos but I also provided outside links in case my readers wanted to know more about the subject. This made what I had to say more accessible for a larger audience.
Noah’s Ark – A Fantastical Animal Adventure: To start off, I really love this post because it’s about the single coolest day of my entire trip. I saw the two most elusive animals of the entire trip in a single day! I really like this post because my passion for nature and everything I experienced on my trip is very relevant. This post reads more like a story than some of my others and it was very effective for what I wanted to share. I can be very open and explicit about my emotions and to accurately capture the way I felt after seeing a tapir and a glass frog in the same day, it was very necessary. In essence, this post really shows the deep connection and emotional attachment I have to my trip and all my experiences and I’m really glad I could share it with my readers.
Caño Island & Corcovado National Park: This post was really effective for several reasons: 1) I’m really pleased with the two maps I took from GoogleMaps to show where Caño and Corcovado were in relation to the rest of Costa Rica. At least for me, being able to visualize locations on a map makes it much easier for me to understand the relation between them. 2) I included pictures and names of many of the species I saw. As a bio-enthusiast, the most exciting part of my trip were all the awesome critters I saw (many of them creatures I’d never seen before) and I really like being able to share that with my audience. Even if they (like me) had no idea what a curassow is, I provided pictures and descriptions so my readers can imagine what I saw. 3) Finally, I really attempted to engaged the readers with this post by asking them to share their experiences. A travel blog isn’t really anything controversial to spark discussion but I has hoping more people would have similar experiences to share. Since that never seemed to be the case, I attempted to ask questions to encourage people with particular similar experiences to comment. It still didn’t work, but at least I tried.