La Fortuna and Monteverde

I've finally seen what other people see in me.

I have a resting-bitch face. I have a look, when I'm relaxed, that indicates that I'm pissed off, bothered that someone is paying attention to me.

People have told me this look can be a little off-putting but I never knew what they were talking about until I put together DW's and my Costa Rica video.

When DW was shooting video, I stayed fairly quiet when she had her camera pointed at me. I didn't know what she was going to say and I didn't want to interrupt her, so I sat quietly until I felt there was a point in which she wanted me to speak.

And while I was in a good mood and was just sitting there, waiting for her lead, I seem either pissed off or non-participatory. And it's a bad look.

At the beginning of the year, for those of you who don't know or might have forgotten, DW and I spent a couple of weeks travelling Costa Rica. Shortly after our return, I made a short video that highlighted those travels.

In that video, I promised to share more over the course of this year, but I never found the time to go through all of the video footage. I was too wrapped up in all of the kayaking videos that you can see on my YouTube channel.

I was hoping that DW and I could sit down, together, and storyboard our trip. We'd have a few videos that covered separate parts of our trip. I was able to get all of DW's video footage together, with mine, but we never found a good time to sit down and put something together.

DW created an animation of our flight from Ottawa to Toronto, and continuing to San Jose, but that was the extent in her participation for the video editing. The rest was up to me, and I was tired of waiting.

This video took three sittings to put together, including the time it took me to learn how to create animations (I created the map illustrations between various points of our drives), to line up and put the clips together, create voiceovers, and get this 25-minute video produced.

Altogether, I probably spent close to 20 hours to make this video, the most time I've spent since we've updated our computer and software.

So, more than 11 months after we left for Costa Rica, here's the first part of our travels, starting with our exploration of La Fortuna and Monteverde. Take a break and have a look.

December is pretty busy: we'll be heading to Mexico in just over a week, Christmas will follow, and I'm looking to create a video that will highlight my favourite photos of 2024 (I promise, it'll be a better video than the last time—and I won't have a resting bitch face!).

Part 2 of our Costa Rica travels won't be ready until January. I'll probably have the vacation broken up into no more than four parts, though three parts might be enough. Stay tuned.

As always, if you like my video, please give it a thumbs-up, and subscribe to my channel to help it grow.

Happy Wednesday!