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Two Nights at Xandari

This little visit to a favorite nature place nearby was scheduled for May 25 and had to be postponed at the last minute because of a sick stomach. I re-introduced Xandari in that May 25 blog post Two Nights at Xandari (linked) within which are links to my 7 other trips there including for one birthday and one Christmas celebration. It is my 3rd best butterfly location (for the number of species) after my Garden and Hotel Banana Azul in Caribe Sur.

In that post I did not link the hotel’s website because they emphasize things like their Spa and pools rather than nature, but if curious, here is the link: https://www.xandari.com/Resort-Spa-costarica-overview.php

Garden Art, Xandari

It was started and first operated by a Frank Lloyd Wright Style Architect and his Art Teacher wife who continued to teach in a special artist pavilion there. The contemporary rooms are decorated with art and sculptures from her and her students as are the gardens with sculptures. A large forest on a mountain north of the city of Alajuela (my provincial capital) with two major waterfalls, a farm, garden and forest trails and of course their Spa and a great restaurant! In their lobby is the only public library of Charlie Doggett photo books! 🙂 They are one of several nature-centered tourist locations in Costa Rica that I have bonded with and I’m always welcomed as a VIP guest with chocolate-covered strawberries and a room upgrade if I want it. Though their “small” rooms are much larger than most other hotel rooms and I’m sure some people retreat there just for their great rooms not to mention 3 pools or the trails for me! 🙂 Whoever bought it from them made it a part of the Xandari chain of exotic hotels out of India. Thus lots of international visitors here! 🙂

Looking out from one of several different rooms I’ve had at Xandari.

Like with most trips, I will probably do posts at night for the next two or three nights, then get back to my usual morning posts. Being able to visit special nature places like this is just one part of my Pura Vida retirement experience in Costa Rica and this is my first overnight trip this year! With 3 more planned for the rest of this year, to 3 of my other favorite places here! So it will be a very good year as I turn 86 next month at Maquenque Eco Lodge! 🙂 Stay tuned for more nature adventures!

¡Pura Vida!

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Brazilian Skipper

A cool little reddish-brown skipper that I’ve seen in my garden before. See other photos in the gallery: Brazilian Skipper.

Brazilian Skipper, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

Tomorrow is the day to which I moved my little 2-night visit to Xandari Nature Resort in Alajuela (because I was sick on the original date in May) and tomorrow morning I will repost or link to the May post about Xandari, a favorite nature place with a large variety of butterflies! Probably my 3rd best location for butterflies. 🙂 And . . .

MY REPORT ON: Pause 10: Final Project—Your Mindful Photography Journal 

That little online class is completed with that above link going to my report on the last class. In the next week or so I will write my personal evaluation of the whole course and say whether I recommend it. 🙂 If interested in Photography & Mindfulness, read all my notes there.

And get ready for my next Nature Adventure at Xandari this week!

¡Pura Vida!

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Laverna Metalmark – Dark & Light

Many species of butterflies can have greatly different looks and yet be the same species and in this case (I think) even the same individual can look quite different because of the light or shadows, the angle of the shot or even the background which I think is the case for these two photos taken within a few seconds of each other on different color backgrounds. I vaguely remember the same individual flying from the blue Plumbago flower to the green leaf of a Heliconia flower.

Laverna Metalmark on a blue Plumbago Flower, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Laverna Metalmark on the green leaf of a Heliconia Flower, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

See more of this regular in my garden in the gallery: Laverna Metalmark.

¡Pura Vida!

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Contemplative Storytelling – Photography & Mindfulness

Here is the link to my notes and report on Phase 9: Contemplative Storytelling.

Using a cardboard “window” to find an image outside or anywhere is an old trick in photography classes, but it gets you focused. I may have shared this vista before, but it was the overwhelming image in this lesson’s activity.

¡Pura Vida!

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Yellow-tipped Flasher

Not new for me, but the first one this rainy season, Yellow-tipped Flasher (my gallery link) is an interesting Skipper Butterfly found from Argentina to Mexico with it seems an abundance in Costa Rica. 🙂

Yellow-tipped Flasher, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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2 Strange Moths at the End of May

On the 29th & 30th of May two unusual moths showed up at my house, one inside and one outside in the garden. The featured photo is one I’ve had before in my garden and seen on a trip to a South Pacific Rainforest. Once called “Giant Butterfly Moth,” it is now called the disgusting name of “Screwworm” – Telchin atymnius (linked to my gallery). It is more beautiful when the wings are open with more white and a big orange patch (see the above linked gallery for that).

Screwworm – Telchin atymnius, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

-o-

And the other one, seen inside my house on the kitchen floor, was comparatively tiny, identified on iNaturalist as a Packard’s Eusarca Moth – Eusarca packardaria, linked to Wikipedia which says it is in North America, but being in the middle of North & South America, we often get species from both sides. Though I am the first to report one on iNaturalist Costa Rica, so it might get re-labeled as something else, though this was the ID of iNaturalist AI and I think a good match.

Packard’s Eusarca Moth – Eusarca packardaria, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Blue-vented Hummingbird

This is my other “non-Rufous-tailed” hummingbird from the one shared yesterday and actually the first species of hummingbird that I photographed just 3 days after moving into this house back in 2015. (Bad photo but good memory!) 🙂 As today’s featured photo shows, it has a rich, deep blue tail that helps it to stand out among other birds. See more of my photos of this special hummingbird in the gallery: Blue-vented Hummingbird. And almost all have been photographed in my garden, though maybe my favorite of this species was photographed at Xandari in 2018! 🙂

Blue-vented Hummingbird, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Blue-vented Hummingbird, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

14,000 Views!

That is how many views my blog & website got during the month of May according to the Jetpack program on my site. That is a lot! THANK YOU for reading my blog/website and the related and linked Gallery! It makes my retirement activities seem more important to have that many people looking at my photos! 🙂

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Canivet’s Emerald & Porterweed

This Canivet’s Emerald (my gallery link) is one of the 3 hummingbirds in my garden, with Blue-vented being the other one secondary to the Rufous-tailed who thinks he owns the garden and when I fill the feeders, hogs them and chases off other hummingbirds (the Canivet’s & Blue-vented), but these other two have easier access to my large number of Porter Weeds, officially called Blue Porterweed, Stachytarpheta jamaicensis (Wikipedia link). They are in the verbena family and are the most popular flower here for both hummingbirds and butterflies. And they are not all blue! 🙂

Canivet’s Emerald, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Blue Porterweed, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica And yeah, they’re not all blue but that’s the name in English! Or Cola del Toro en español

¡Pura Vida!

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May Flowers

Because I give priority to wildlife & travel in my blog posts, there are often not a lot of my garden flowers shown, thus I recently started using the last day of the month to feature photos I took that month of flowers in my garden not yet in the blog. Here are my photos from the month of May in two galleries, one of verticals and one of horizontals, simply because they display better that way. 🙂 Both galleries appear in the online blog after this one image for the emailed version of the blog post . . .

Torch Ginger or El Bastón del Emperador
Continue reading “May Flowers”
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Photography & Mindfulness 8 Report

You can go directly to the report at: https://www.charliedoggett.net/about-me/photographer/photography-mindfulness/pause-8-looking-inward-may-29-2026/

My 1st year in Costa Rica this terrace vista gave me lots of self introspection.

I continue to find small amounts of inspiration from this class, but overall, I’m not impressed with most of it. Just not exactly what I expected or the way I would present “Mindfulness,” but an excuse, in today’s case, to use some old photos! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

Sunrise at Banana Azul watching a man & boy canoeing in the ocean during my morning meditation.