Author: Charlie

Retired American nature-lover, living in Costa Rica, photographing birds and other jewels of nature. This site simply reports on my joys of being RETIRED IN COSTA RICA!
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Will Costa Rica Become the only Chocolate Grower?

Will Costa Rica become the only source of chocolate by 2050?

Roasting cocoa seeds

The above link is a really interesting article in one of our online English newspapers. Chocolate comes from the cacao tree which will only grow 20 ° north or south of the equator and in the correct amount of humidity. Central America and particularly Costa Rica are perfect for that. West Africa has been good for cocoa, but global warming, higher temperatures and the desertification of West Africa along with some plant diseases there may someday, possibly by 2050, eliminate all cocoa farming in West Africa. They are experimenting with hybrid plants there says this month’s National Geographic magazine, but already people are saying the resulting chocolate is not as good.

Cacao is grown all over Costa Rica as small family farm businesses and by some of the indigenous peoples as I described in my recent visit to the Bribri Watsi village and earlier from my visit to Bribri Yorkin as we watched their children suck the sweet white stuff from around the cacao beans and we tried it ourselves.

If you ever visit Costa Rica there are many chocolate tours you can take to learn the complicated process for making one of the world’s favorite sweets.

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” 
― Charles M. Schulz

¡Pura Vida!

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My Photos Place 3rd & 5th in Local Photo Contest

A large number of expats living in Atenas depend upon a local Facebook Group called Atenas Costa Rica Info and the administrator recently asked for photo submissions to be used as the header on the group page – photos made of or in Atenas. I submitted about 10 and 2 of mine placed in the top 10 as voted on by local users of the group. The above sunset photo placed 3rd and the below dancers placed 5th in the contest.

 

And the winner is . . .

And the winning photo was of this Oro Tree in the front yard of one of the local expats, Walter Wengrowich. It is beautiful and a good choice, representative of Atenas! I’m glad he won and owns such a beautiful tree!

  • “Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”
    — Destin Sparks

¡Pura Vida!

 

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Perfect Weather Here & Horrible Politics There

WARNING: Please Don’t Read if Politics Offend You!

 

The header photo above is Bribri Watsi Waterfalls, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Costa Rica where I was two weeks ago. Warmer there than Atenas.

El Mejor Clima del Mundo = The Best Weather in the World

That is the Chamber of Commerce slogan for the small farming town of Atenas, Costa Rica because some writer said that years ago in an article he wrote in National Geographic. Of course a claim like that will always be debatable, but it is basically true for me and I cannot say it better than a fellow expat retiree in Atenas wrote yesterday in one of our local Facebook groups:

Weather and our green season = another perfect day in Atenas. Nice hot, clear skies in the morning (82F inside our home) and now rain with brilliant colors of blue, grey and white in our clouds. Perfect!!!! Feeling = happy.       ~Mary Cook

Note that we locals call “Rainy Season” (May-Nov) “Green Season” here. And it is definitely my favorite time of year! Sunny mornings & rain in late afternoon or evening. More comfortable, greener, more beautiful and fewer northern tourists!  🙂

¡Pura Vida!

 

I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.

~Katherine Mansfield

 

My Left-wing Take on the U.S. November 6 Election

For years I have watched the dangerous fascist rightward movement of my beloved country of birth. I watched a John Birch Society take over and nearly destroy a church I served in South Florida in the 1960’s. As a lifetime servant of the Southern Baptist Convention I watched immoral shenanigans of power-hungry despots increasingly gain control of the then largest non-Catholic denomination at annual meetings. During this time I watched fellow-Christians being seduced  by the obviously non-Christian “Tea Party” politics. Then as a 22-year employee of the Baptist Sunday School Board (LifeWay Christian Resources) I suffered the “takeover” by right-wing fascists who brought in bankers and businessmen who saw only a bottom line profit and created the collapse of one of the greatest publishing houses and ministries ever created for Christianity, while “downsizing” out experienced servants like myself. At times I thought my total world was collapsing with the added trauma of an unfriendly divorce, single-parenting, death of a child and both my parents right before losing my job only 3 years before retirement age.

God’s provision for those 3 years was miraculous and wonderful, but the following 12 years of retirement in Tennessee continued to expose the dangerous political changes coming to America and my church and was one of my major, though unstated, reasons for moving my retirement to Costa Rica in 2014. And that was even before I knew anything about Trump.  Other reasons for moving here were listed in this 2014 post when I still feared alienating my conservative friends and blamed it mostly on high costs in the states. I think too much is at stake in America today to worry about alienating people now.

The dangerous fascism of many of my own Christian friends and many other factors led to the disastrous election of 2016, while I was enjoying retirement in my new home country of Costa Rica. Anyone who is not shocked by the immoral Donald Trump and his spineless Republican Congress has probably not continued reading this far. But I sincerely believe that NOW IS THE TIME TO BEGIN CHANGE! And I have yet to see it stated any better than an editorial in today’s Washington Post:

A reminder: America’s future is at stake in the 2018 midterms, an opinion article by Brian Klaas.

I hope you will be able to open and read it without being a subscriber. I’m not sure how that works. And I hope you will vote Democrat at every level this election! I already have in my absentee ballot. A blue wave is needed!

And now I hope to avoid politics for a long time in this blog. It is really about my retirement in wonderful Costa Rica! (But part of my heart is still in the states.) One week from tomorrow I will be reporting from a rainforest lodge near Golfito, Costa Rica:   Esquinas Lodge   Only positive stuff then!

¡Pura Vida!

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The Dilemma of So Many Photos . . .

First Plan Was Everything on this Website

Even though WordPress websites have photo galleries and I could put all my photos on the website – my original plan – so far they do not have the flexibilities and quality options that I have with my SmugMug.com photo gallery which recently purchased and incorporated Flickr where I also still have a small class-related gallery. https://www.flickr.com/photos/charliedoggett/   I will eventually close it, even though free.

Currently I Have 2 Large Online Photo Galleries

Now back in my first 12 years of retirement in Tennessee I chose to use the online photo gallery called Pbase, which the Nashville Photography Club used. Images I sold in galleries and arts & crafts fairs are there in 5 categories plus all my travel photos by trip, and others. It is a great database type program with lots of sub-sub-gallery possibilities, etc. but not quite as user-friendly or as visually attractive as SmugMug which I chose as my new photo gallery after moving to Costa Rica and comparing several online galleries, thus came   Charlie Doggett’s COSTA RICA,  which has had only Costa Rica photos thus far.

Move Both Galleries With Website & Blog or Not?

This year when I decided to move my website AND blog to WordPress (from Joomla & Blogger), I really wanted to move all my photo galleries here too – the luxury of everything in one place! And WordPress has that option! But I quickly learned that the more photos I put on this site, the slower it runs! And that is with me reducing the size of most photos since the web does not need large files, but then they are not good for you to download and print if you want. While I upload full-size photos to SmugMug & Pbase that are not only good for you to download and use but they are big enough (except some zoomed in birds) for you to use the SmugMug “BUY” Button and order prints, wall art, etc.

Thus I changed my mind and decided to not move my photos to the new website. Though I will continue to use photos on the site & blog (web-sized), since photography is central to almost anything I do or write about.

One Gallery As a Linked Part of the Website

So on the top MENU of this site is the 3rd item GALLERY,  which is a link to my SmugMug Gallery that I want to become my only gallery. And what about the hundreds of photos still on Pbase? Well I started with some of the Family History photos as inefficient little galleries within this website’s articles, adding to the slowdown. Then I decided to move all of those to the SmugMug gallery which is created to handle a volume of pix. That means I have now started my first non-Costa Rica gallery inside my Costa Rica gallery!  🙂

Just Added Family History to My Photo Gallery

It is called Family History Photos and currently has 4 sub-galleries:

Only the first two sub-galleries are moved now from Pbase and they are both a part of the web pages Family History that includes much more like cemeteries and stories from WWII, etc. While the other two sub-galleries will eventually have their own web pages and likewise include a lot of other information! So lot’s of work still to do here. Keeps me out of trouble!  🙂

More Non-Costa Rica Galleries Coming!

One of my “Best Sellers” in Arts & Crafts Fairs in TN

Then I anticipate at least two more non-Costa Rica sub-galleries on SmugMug:

These too will be related to and linked from pages on this personal website. Eventually it will seem like my whole life is reported somewhere on this website. I cannot explain why I have a passion to do this, but somehow I am driven to complete it all long before I die. It is like my passion for nature, travel, photography, stories, my family history and reporting on it all here!

 “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”

—Vincent Van Gogh

🙂

¡Pura Vida!

 

 

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Newest Book is Now Out! Caribe Tuanis

Here’s the LINK to the photo book of my trip two weeks ago: Caribe Tuanis    Click title to REVIEW the book electronically in my bookstore, all pages for free!  Best seen at Full Screen!

Jumping at Bribri Watsi Waterfall

The title is my fusion of two Costa Rica slang words and is not grammatically   correct Spanish! One Tico tried to get me to add “El” like “The” in English. No. “Caribe” is CR slang or short for Caribbean which I think is used in English some also and the slang word “Tuanis” is like the American slang of earlier years “Cool.” So my English translation of the title would be “Caribbean Cool.” 

Three-toed Sloth this year – Rare face shot

Since my last year’s book on the Caribbean was all birds and nature, I wanted to do something different this year, featuring teens jumping off a waterfall and surfers riding the waves plus Bribri Indigenous People, and of course the Rastas of all Caribbean Culture.  Enjoy!

¡Pura Vida!

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New Business Card

Well, not really “business” but “contact information” for people I relate to here and how to get to my photos and blog which is a little simpler with everything now at my website, charliedoggett.net   –   I like this card better than earlier ones!

Front
Back

 

No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.        ~Robert Adams

🙂

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2018 Costa Rica Open Dance Fest

The Atenas Expats Men’s Club had another trip Saturday and I participated, the first time in several months. A bus load of us traveled to San Jose for a lunch stop at El Rodeo and then the afternoon at a portion of the two-day International 2018 Costa Rica Open Dance Fest, an annual event and contest (like “Dancing With the Stars”) that attracts contestants from most of the Latin American countries and the United States. We saw just a small portion or about 3 hours worth.

This time I’m asking you to go to my photo gallery on the event:

2018 Costa Rica Open Dance Fest

It was colorful and high energy with all ages of dancers. Go browse a few photos of children, teens or adults! You’ll be glad you did!   🙂

 

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.        – Martha Graham

 

2018 Costa Rica Open Dance Fest

Above for more of my photos or

below for Facebook Videos:

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=2018%20costa%20rica%20open%20dance%20fest

And MORE VIDEOS on the Dance Fest official Facebook Page: 

https://www.facebook.com/cropendancefest/

¡Pura Vida!

 

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New CR Birds Photo Gallery

My Costa Rica Birds Gallery is still big with almost 270 species of birds included but is a little cleaner and easier to use now, especially for birders. Instead of one gallery with a jumble of 400 to 500 photos arranged alphabetically, it is now a folder with a SEPARATE GALLERY FOR EACH SPECIES so there is no longer the confusion of having multiple images of some species, but when you browse you will only look at one image of each species and then click it if you want to see that image larger or see multiple images of that bird. A separate gallery for each species. That will make it even more efficient as my collection of bird photos grows and gets better!

Plus birders will especially like that I have them ARRANGED BY FAMILIES or in the order found in the book The Birds of Costa Rica, A Field Guide. 

Go directly to my new bird gallery:   Costa Rica Birds by Species (269)

Emerald Toucanet — One of the 269 species in my new CR Birds gallery.

 

And you might want to know that I am uploading the full-size image here so you can DOWNLOAD ONE FOR FREE and use as you wish or PURCHASE A PHOTO (like the above Toucanet) as a “Card,” “Paper Print,” “Wall Art” print (I’m favoring high-gloss metal now) “Keepsake,” or “Phone Case.” It is a service of Smugmug.com with multiple vendors at their prices with me getting only $1 per order which is okay with me because I’m retired now!  🙂 And not in business! At the bottom of each enlarged photo is a green button BUY for you to go to the purchase options. Check it out for all the neat options for some of my birds or other Costa Rica photos!

Flash Postscript!  2 of my photos made the final 10 cut for header of the Facebook Group Atenas Costa Rica Info  Mine are the Spanish Dancers & the Pink & Blue Sunset Mountains. For a header I prefer the sunset photo as better for type face going over it, but I do not expect to win, believing that either the orange tree or green landscape will win and of those two I prefer the landscape also because it is better for titles printing over it. Members of the facebook group vote for the new group header photo.

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

Hopefully I am beyond 10,000 by now!   🙂   ¡Pura Vida!

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Independence Day Parade – Audience

Sometimes the people watching the parade are the most interesting thing seen! 🙂 The family portrait above tells a story, I think! And of course the children are always the most photogenic! This slideshow is my last on this year’s Independence Day Parade. See if you can find the 4 people with eyes glued to their device screens (2 are above). Cell phones dominate people around the world!  🙂

And next year I’m adding a new parade by going to the Caribe during Carnival! I’ll photograph the smaller one in Puerto Viejo and not the big one in Limon where I’ve heard it can be dangerous. I don’t want to lose my cameras again! (I was at the Puntarenas Carnival Parade my first year here when my camera bag was snatched from a sidewalk cafe.) But anyway, more parades coming!

¡Larga vida a Costa Rica!

Slideshow: Independence Day Parade Atenas – Audience

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For all aspects of the parade see photo gallery 2018 Independence Day Parade Atenas 

 

All holidays can be good times.    ~John Clayton

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Independence Day Parade – Flags

It is the one patriotic parade of the year so of course it has to have lots of flags! From the primary school through high schools are flags here and  though no good pix, there were some with adults representing the Fire Department and Red Cross. Here’s a few of the students with flags in a short slideshow:

Slideshow: Independence Day Parade Atenas – Flags

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For all aspects of the parade see photo gallery 2018 Independence Day Parade Atenas