Cobán: Unplanned Orchids

Owing to a late start on my part and infrequent transportation on Sundays, I was only able to make it 30 miles to Cobán after leaving Lanquín.  Owing to unclean water and/or poor food preparation, I found myself forced to spend the next 3 or 4 days in Cobán.  There isn't a whole lot going on in Cobán, but I wasn't up for anything that took me further than 50 meters from the nearest bathroom.  At that point there isn't much you can do but eat antibiotics, replace all the fluids you're losing and wait for it to pass.

On my last day in Cobán, though, I felt somewhat better and decided I might as well do something.  Call it a test run before getting on an overnight bus.  So off I went to the orchid nursery.

One of their specialties is miniature orchids.  Yes, that's a champagne cork.

These photos are in no particular order, mostly because this was so long ago now that I've long forgotten any plan I might have had.  But flowers are pretty, and that is reason unto itself.

This, though, I remember is the biggest orchid in the world.

It's these long dangly bits that make it the "biggest."  Kinda cheating, if you ask me.  "Longest" I might allow.

Feel free to chime in with identifications or whatnot.

It's all kind of lost on me, quite frankly.

There were flowers other than orchids, of course.

Another tiny one (not my hand).

Ah, very nice.

Purple.

This guy was pretty funny/bizarre. Check out the video.

It's almost obscene, right?

 Some of them don't even really look like flowers.

 Ach! It's tiny!

 Another smallish one.  And beautiful.

Weird/cool.

It's a see-through bug!

I particularly liked this purplish one.

In the low light it was ghostly, almost seeming to produce its own light.  Can we go even closer?

Yes!

And that was pretty much it.