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!
I’m not often in my garden or even out of my house at night, but with late watering tonight I saw how different it looks and tried to photograph it, though a photo can’t capture the magic of night in a garden. The blue flowers are Plumbago.
“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
As I continue to build my website “Retired in Costa Rica” I continue to add blog posts, photo galleries, and “static pages” (undated) about Costa Rica and about me, my travels and stories. This week I’ve added under TRAVEL a new NORTH AMERICA page, Canada and a new CENTRAL AMERICA, Costa Rica sub-page, Atenas.
A different hotel/lodge every month except April when a gang from Nashville come to volunteer in the children’s home here in Atenas. 4 lodges are repeats but such great places they will be totally new experiences! I start this month near the Nicaragua border sleeping 5 nights in a treehouse and from there it is everything from Whale Watching to Tapirs and of course lots of birds! There will be new wildlife this year and also its the year I expect to top 300 bird species that I will have photographed in Costa Rica! What a life! 🙂
And you may wonder why I am planning so far ahead? Well, it was not far enough for some places I wanted to visit, especially for next Christmas when my first two choices were already booked. Costa Rica and its best lodges and hotels are very popular and stay booked more than a year in advance.
The links on the hotel/lodge name is to that hotel’s website, if you are interested. And the map gives the approximate location of each visit this year using the month number for when I visit that spot and listing indicates lodge or national park visited that month.
*The 4 starred hotels are repeats for me, meaning I really like them! 🙂 And this is what it is like to be Retired in Costa Rica, the name of my blog! Pura vida!
For those who know Costa Rica the map helps understand where I’m traveling this year, my first to not go to Osa Peninsula, as I explore new places.
So much is blooming with the beginning of “Dry Season” or our Spring and Summer that as I prepared breakfast this morning I decided to take my camera around the garden for few shots before eating, AND, as maybe God intended, two birds got into the photo areas while I did this. I live in a beautiful garden! 🙂
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. ~Song of Songs 2:12 NIV
The Flowers — Click to Enlarge
Porterweed, a type of Verbena: Stachytarpheta
Plumbago
Flame Vine or Triquitraque
Crown of Thorns
Desert Rose
Morning Glory
Torch Ginger or El bastón de emperador
Tibouchina or Princess Flower
Yellow Bells (my name)
Red Ginger
Poinsettia
Once de Abril
Peacock Flower, Dwarf Poinciana & other names for Caesalpinia pulcherrima
“It’s a small world!” phenomenon only happens occasionally and when it does it always brings a big smile to my face. 🙂 It happened today, January 1, 2019, with a message through the contact form on this site from an address I did not recognize. I will keep their names private but briefly share the fun serendipity story of that email greeting:
The email starts with the couple (an educator & a musician from Canada but now in the states) saying they were looking at a travel book reviewing all the countries of the world and when they came to The Gambia, they were reminded of me since I’m the only person they had ever met from there, though a long time ago, and remembered the Gambia photos on my condo wall.
My downtown Nashville Row House for first 10 years of retirement.
THE STORY
It was around the first of January 2003 (16 years ago) when after returning from The Gambia I finally moved from the Residence Inn Nashville West End to my new row house in Hope Gardens/Germantown across from the Farmer’s Market and Bicentennial Mall State Park (Header photo above). I think I used my new Tacoma pickup to move my stuff from the hotel to my new row house. As happens sometimes, a box fell out of the truck along West End Avenue and this charming couple from western Canada, in town as Vanderbilt students, saw the box and stopped, picking it up and diligently tracing it to me at my new address! Wow! There are still a few “Good Samaritans” left in the world! 🙂 Thank you!
When they brought the box to me I gave them an invitation to my already planned open house later in January and they came! And still remember it and all my Gambia photos on the walls.
Thus the connection when they read about Gambia in the book. They found me and my website in an internet search and decided to write their very kind and thoughtful New Year’s greeting through the contact form on my website. Small world & fun memories! 🙂
Thanks friends! For remembering AND writing! Good Samaritans in my life!
“We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves. We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like. Jesus will have none of that. By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew, Jesus could not have found a more forceful way to say that anyone at all in need – regardless of race, politics, class, and religion – is your neighbour. Not everyone is your brother or sister in faith, but everyone is your neighbour, and you must love your neighbour.”
― Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just
¡Pura Vida!
Bicentennial Mall Carillons across the street from my Row House – Nice music!
How blessed I am to have lived is so many beautiful places! AND to have had so many neat experiences like this! THANK YOU GOD!
One favorite photo from each month of 2018 – And I had trouble picking just one! Thus the header photo above is an extra one from October and the only one here from Esquinas Rainforest Lodge, Piedras Blancas National Park, my #1 lodge this year.
January 2018 – My Discovery of Calle Nueva in my own neighborhood!
April 2018 – A group from First Baptist Nashville on my front porch. They came a volunteers working in the Hogar de Vida Children’s Home for a week. I’m not allowed to show children faces, thus picked this photo.
Wow! This was too hard to do! My very best photos were probably all in 3 or 4 months, so I will try something different next year, like maybe my top 5 or so favorite photos. I think I will also try to rank the hotels/lodges/parks I visited this year.
Ranking My Top 7 Lodges in 2018
I rank for all aspects of the lodge for a birder and/or nature lover, not necessarily in this order: number of birds and other wildlife seen, quality of guides, quality of overall service, restfulness of room, quality meals, overall ecology consciousness and sometimes the extra services, depending on the place and situation. My 2018 Top 7 lodges and hotels in order of my preference or enjoyment:
Everywhere I go in Costa Rica I’m captivated by the flowers! Here’s a few from my recent visit to Manuel Antonio, park, hotel grounds, and other locations, Click an image to enlarge it or start a manual slideshow:
NOTE TO OTHER WP BLOGGERS : This is my first post with the new WP5 Editing Software called “Guttenberg.” For now I’m staying with the Theme “Twenty Seventeen” which means my pages still look about the same. Their new recommended default Theme is called “Twenty Nineteen” and designed for the new editor, but does not have the right column I’m used to, so debating over that change, but may try it. The biggest difference on this post now is that the “Quotation Block” looks different and is very nice though it doesn’t seem to allow color typeface like I was using with dark red. But I like the softer quote look. And the “Button” to click for a link to my gallery (or other places) is new and I like that very much. All our different worlds are constantly changing! 🙂
One reason for choosing the “Central Valley” area to live in my retirement in Costa Rica was the weather and more specifically Atenas is the weather, which averages around 72° year around and a National Geographic article writer once stated that Atenas has “the best weather in the world.” Thus on the back of all our buses is the slogan: “Viste Atenas – Mejor Clima del Mundo.” (Visit Atenas – Best Weather in the World) No one here has air conditioner or heater in their house! I sleep under just a sheet or one blanket with all my windows open, year around. Header photo is view from my house terrace.
For example, today’s AccuWeather forecast has Atenas with a high of 79° and low of 64°: https://www.accuweather.com/en/cr/atenas/111860/weather-forecast/111860 I formatted it for U.S. English and Farenheit temps but if it comes up Spanish and Centigrade you can change at top of page. Compare that to the U.S. weather forecast! (Rain, snow, ice) Or here to other expat communities like cold & rainy San Ramon and Grecia or hot & humid coastal areas or smoggy San Jose .
I enjoyed visiting the ocean Christmas Week, but would not want to live there because it is very hot and humid year around. But some prefer that. And most expats who move to the coast have air conditioning in their house, a big additional expense, year around! Plus generally everything else is much more expensive there (think tourist prices) AND they are further away from the best medical care and the best shopping options.
Christopher Howard today posted on his “Live in Costa Rica” Blog an article that says even more than this about the weather here:
It is finished and is the best summary of my most recent trip which you can thumb through electronically for free in my bookstore or click the cover image below:
One reason for choosing the “Central Valley” area to live in my retirement in Costa Rica was the weather and more specifically Atenas is the weather, which averages around 72° year around and a National Geographic article writer once stated that Atenas has “the best weather in the world.” Thus on the back of all our buses is the slogan: “Viste Atenas – Mejor Clima del Mundo.” (Visit Atenas – Best Weather in the World) No one here has air conditioner or heater in their house! I sleep under just a sheet or one blanket with all my windows open, year around. Header photo is view from my house terrace. 