Flutter by, butterfly

At The Butterfly Farm in La Guacima, hundreds of butterflies live in a lush, enclosed tropical garden. This working farm raises nearly 60 species of gorgeous butterflies and is the leading export of live butterfly pupae in the world. Pretty amazing!

The third graders in Lauren's class have been studying the life cycles of living creatures and took a field trip to La Finca de Mariposas to see all stages of a butterfly's life in a natural setting. Of course I volunteered to chaperone again; class field trips here are fantastic.

Learning about the butterflies on this comprehensive tour was really interesting, but the best part of the trip was watching the flying flowers (especially the blue morphos—my favorites!) gracefully dance around us and sometimes even land on us when we were very still.


Words can't describe the beauty of the setting and the butterflies, so I got snap-happy and took a lot of photos. It was hard to choose which to share.

Below, a huge and gorgeous blue morpho landed on my friend Isa's backpack. I have seen many types of butterflies here in Costa Rica, but the morpho is absolutely stunning. A nondescript brown when its wings are folded, it is breathtaking when it opens its wings and takes off in flight.


This butterfly isn't yellow, but almost a neon green. I think it's a Swallowtail.


I love this last photo (above) not only because the tropical foliage is so amazing, but because if you look closely you can see a flash of blue in the middle of the picture—the blue morpho, of course. It's hard to tell, but there were actually butterflies all around in this setting. ¡Pura mariposas!