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Alma de Café in the National Theater, downtown San Jose, was chosen by a British publication as one of the best coffee shops in the world. I’ve been there and it is a wonderful “Old World” coffee shop that would be at home anywhere in Europe and has fabulous coffee and pastries! I highly recommend it! Read about it’s new honor on Christopher Howard’s “Live in Costa Rica” Blog.
¡Pura Vida!
Both yesterday and today I went out around my house looking for birds about 6:20 to 6:40 AM, before breakfast. Both mornings I found birds with gray heads and yellow fronts! Yesterday (before going to Bosque Municipal) I got distant shots of the above Gray-crowned Yellowthroat (link is to Cornell’s “Neo-Tropical Birds”) seen in the cow pasture across the street from my house, my first of this species here, though I got better photos at Curi-Cancha Reserve, Monteverde last year, also in a meadow. Check ’em out!
A more common or more frequently seen-by-me-bird is this common flycatcher which has gray & yellow coloring like the above but is much larger. To learn more about him from Cornell’s “Neo-Tropical Birds,” click this name link, Gray-capped Flycatcher or go see my Gray-capped Flycatcher Photo Gallery (better photos than this). There are around 50 different species of birds here labeled some kind of “Flycatcher,” so a lot of variety! And yes, they do eat flies and other insects! 🙂
“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”
― When Women Were Birds
¡Pura Vida!
Central Park is not the only park in Atenas! We have a sports park in front of the elementary school, a public soccer field separately down the street and a public swimming pool! I have shown much of the sports park and mentioned the others, but the most important one for me is one I had never entered until today – Bosque Municipal Atenas – Atenas Municipal Forest.
My friend from British Columbia wanted to go and I always have, so we went together to our “nature park” or forest for birds this morning. It is five miles west on Ruta 3 at Vista Linda or the edge of Barrio Jesus, on the right-hand side of the highway with multiple signs and two entrances. The main entrance is near the second sign or further up the mountain at the big community soccer field across the highway from Vista Linda Restaurant & Bar. Just walk around to the other side of the soccer field. Our first taxi driver knew nothing about it but was glad for the $13 one-way taxi drive! 🙂 The taxi that picked us up was very familiar with it, meaning that some people are into nature and others are not! 🙂
Well, we went for birds, especially the Long-tailed Manakin that definitely lives there and we heard their songs many times (toledo, toledo, toledo) but never was close enough to one for a photo. In fact the above Keel-billed Toucan is the only decent bird photo I got with efforts at some tiny birds and a blurry Woodcreeper. Maybe next time! 🙂 BUT, we saw lots of butterflies and below are 5 species I got shots of, some are new species for me.
I did not get shots of the two highway signs – sorry!
See my Butterfly Gallery (nearly 100 species!) or other parts of Atenas in my Atenas Gallery. Or just go for ALL! 🙂
And though I didn’t photograph any here, I have a gallery of my Long-tailed Manakin shots.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. ~Henry David Thoreau
¡Pura Vida!
This bird was watching me eat breakfast yesterday morning on my terrace. Learn more about the White-winged Dove on Cornell’s “All About Birds” website. One of many that frequent my garden.
“Birds are the eyes of Heaven.”
―
¡Pura Vida!
Someone recently asked me about getting around the country by bus and I think I referred them to the Bus Schedule website which lists all of the option when you type in the “From” and “To” spaces on that website with all bus companies included.
Well, I forgot about an even better help beyond schedules, the Facebook Group Page Costa Rica by Bus on which you can post a question (may have to join group first) and some of the many people who travel by bus will share their experiences and advice. And of course they also recommend the bus schedule site above. And by the way, that bus in photo above is the one I took to Turrialba.
I plan to go to a birding lodge near San Isidro del General in May, so anticipate my report on that bus experience then. I use the bus almost weekly to go from Atenas to Alajuela for many different reasons and have gone to San Jose by bus many times. Some of my other bus adventures have been (with links to photo galleries):
All of this was to simply say that you can travel on a “shoestring budget” and see a lot of Costa Rica whether you live here or visiting. Buses are cheap here! That is the way most Ticos travel! And you can do it without the Spanish language, though much easier and a richer experience if you speak at least a little Spanish.
Now, as a retiree who has made seeing all of Costa Rica my main activity, I do not do everything the budget-way and love to go the longer distances on Sansa Airlines or to places less than 3 hours from Atenas by my favorite driver here in Atenas, but I do not have a car and have basically quit renting cars because of the high insurance cost, thus seeing Costa Rica by bus is one option I still use when I consider it the most practical way. The next bus report comes in May! 🙂
“Live with no excuses and travel with no regrets” ~ Oscar Wilde
I just realized that I did a similar post in 2017, Seeing Costa Rica by Bus 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Well, I’ve had a lot going on the last couple of weeks and haven’t really been checking on the park renovation much nor making photos. So a fellow-retiree from the states, Steve, who is here now for just a few months (but may move here later I hope) emailed me with this message and the above photo of the latest development in the renovation of Atenas Central Park:
Couldn’t resist.
My turn to tell you about progress on new park center.
They have started to install fabric covers between the two outer rings. ~Steve
I didn’t use his last name because I didn’t ask permission to share, but Steve & his wife have been regular readers of my blog for some time now and are thinking about retiring here like me and a lot of other people. Thanks Steve & Lucy!
¡Pura Vida!
Just had to write this unique date down! It is one of the few dates that works for both Americans who write the month first and all the rest of the world who write the day first! Plus it just looks cool! All those twos and zeros! Say it like this: “O-two O-two, two-O two-O” 🙂
POSTSCRIPT: Larry Yarborough wrote in the comments below what I did not know about this unique date:
FROM AXIOS:
Today’s date is a rare eight-digit palindrome (reads same, forward and backward), 02/02/2020 — the only one of its kind this century:
Aziz Inan, a University of Portland (Ore.) professor who has a website chronicling 500 years’ worth of palindromes, tells the Post about today’s rare configuration — where both MM/DD/YEAR and DD/MM/YEAR are palindromes.“The previous eight-digit palindrome like this was 11/11/1111, 909 years ago. We’ll only have to wait another 101 years for 12/12/2121.”
P.S. Today is “the 33rd day of the year, which is followed by 333 more days.” ~Thanks to Larry Yarborough for sharing this Axios Post!
The feature photo is of the cow pasture and tree line along a little stream across from my house. This morning at 6 I decided to walk over along that tree line with my camera looking for morning birds – nada! Not a one! As has been the case the other times I tried that very “birdy-looking” area. The water in the stream is quite polluted (gray water from houses nearby) which may be the reason for no birds or it was windy this morning, though that time of year. And I’ve never heard of cows scaring birds! But not one bird over there! (Maybe snakes?) I do better just sitting on my terrace! Though walking uphill like I did yesterday is even better! I will do that more often!
The dove below was on the power line in front of my house and the shot of something burning nearby was the only photo I made from the cow pasture. Sugar cane farmers are burning the remains of their fields after the harvest this month or occasionally someone burns trash, though they are not suppose to in the dry season! 🙂 ¡Pura vida!
Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream. ~Khalil Gibran
¡Pura Vida!
02-02-2020
Glad to get back to nature posts after all the other stuff I’ve been posting the last week! And the featured photo above is a Passion Flower growing on a neighbor’s wall along the street uphill above my house.
In my Roca Verde neighborhood, and most neighborhoods across Costa Rica, we have “Snow Birds” or “winter residents” who come to visit or live here during the very cold months up north (Dec-Apr). One of those couples I met for the first time last year always stay in Roca Verde, just a few doors up the hill from me – she is a birder and he a relaxer. 🙂 They are from British Columbia, Canada.
Yesterday she showed me all birds she had photographed in Atenas in just one week, most right here in our neighborhood! Thus I was shamed into birding more in my own neighborhood and later some other places in Atenas – but it means getting up at 5:30 in the morning which I have not been doing much here. Mixed emotions!
This morning I spent just one hour, mostly between 6 & 7 and saw about 20 species of birds, photographing about 15 of them! ALL WITHIN 300 METERS OF MY HOUSE! For you Americans, that’s just 3 blocks, and all along the street in front of my house, up the hill. Of course I ran into Margaret who get out every morning early for birds and we birded together much of the time. I will not do it every day like her, but hopefully more often now!
By 7 there are not a lot of birds to see. It is the magical hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset that give the most birds! (Same thing on my trips!) And some of these birds from today have not come to my house or I haven’t seen them in my garden yet. CLICK AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT . . .
I like where I live! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Back in 2015 in a Post titled My Library I told you a tiny bit about the life-changing book I had just read titled Pay It Forward, by Catherine Ryan Hyde, about a little boy’s school project to change the world that actually did. And it was made into a movie that I cannot get here. If you have never read it, I encourage you to! I had learned about it from reading another book by her titled Electric God which was very good, just not as great at Pay It Forward!
Well, recently I have finished two more books by Catherine Ryan Hyde that also can be life changing for some people: Stay, about another boy, age 14, who helped three people in his life not commit suicide and thus changed his world, their world and the world of hundreds of other people.
Then tonight I finished my 4th book by her titled Heaven Adjacent. It is about a workaholic, divorced attorney woman whose best friend was also a workaholic saving for a “good retirement” when she suddenly dies of a stroke. Rosie realizes in the loss of her friend that money is not what was needed for real life. She then does an irrational thing, telling no one, she walks away from her 
law firm, driving to a tiny rural area in an adjacent state, buys a tiny little farm house, planning to live the rest of her life in quiet solitude away from the mad rush of the city, work, family and search for money. (Kind of like me coming to Costa Rica.) But you could never imagine the life-changing adventure her bizarre action creates. You have to read it to see! 🙂
Catherine Ryan Hyde novels are too emotionally moving for me to read any more for awhile. But I will eventually read more.
Now back to escape novels by Agatha Christie (I’m working on completing all the Poirot mysteries now) and then I have pre-ordered the book 
coming out next month The Adventurer’s Son, a memoir about the National Geographic Explorer’s son who came to Costa Rica after me as a college-age young man and hiked alone into the magnificent Corcovado National Park (one of my favorite places here) never to be seen again. I read news reports for a short time, then nothing. Now I will get the full story or as much as his father knows. Another possible life-changing book and very close to home for me! 🙂 Much better than TV!
I live in a Spanish-speaking country where it is the official language and it is needed for almost all services, public and commercial. When I lived in the States I heard many people say about immigrants, “If they want to live here, they can learn English!” And I basically agree, though I now know from experience that it is easier said than done!
“Spoiled Americans” here who refuse to learn Spanish or even learn very slow like me, have created a need for English speakers in many of the commercial customer services here, like the competitive cable services who are learning that Customer Service in English can mean more money from the thousands of Americans living here.
My first cable service here was pretty good service for a long time and by waiting I could often get English-speaking customer service if needed, but recently everything was going wrong. No TV service (which helped me decide to drop it) and frequent failure of internet and more frequently the WiFi connections. I tried repeatedly to get technical service and to change my contract to faster internet and no TV, both with my bad Spanish and then asking for an English speaker. At least 5 efforts failed with either disconnected calls or the promise of a call-back that never happened.
Thus I decided to switch from CableTica to TeleCable and when I called the new company they instantly recognized I was weak in Spanish and within 30 seconds switched me to a very good English-speaker. We set up a time for the técnicos to come out and rewire my house at their expense. I waited until they were here in the house to call the other company to cancel my services with them. (I needed the internet even if intermittent!) I called and canceled in Spanish, briefly explaining why. Within 2 minutes I received a phone call back from a very fluent English speaker (probably a supervisor) at that company, apologizing profusely for their lack of service and English-speakers, almost begging me to give them another chance, even offering 2 months free! I told him I was sorry but he was too late with my new service being installed as we spoke. Then he took my credit card number to pay him for one of their trucks to come out and pick up their TV Box and Internet Router which was cheaper ($22) than me having to return it in the city by taxi!
I now have 100 MB TeleCable Internet Service and no TV! A happy camper! 🙂 And if you are worried about my lack of entertainment, I do have Costa Rica Netflix for which I attach my computer to the TV to see those great nature documentaries and rarely a movie! 🙂 Plus I’m always reading on my Kindle a book and the Washington Post for news and Comics! What else does a guy need? 🙂
Thus cable service became “the straw that broke the camel’s back” on my slow fluency in Spanish and I signed up for one week of Spanish Language Immersion to see if an old man can handle it and then if so I will add more. This will simply make my 2 hours a week with tutor Arturo here in Atenas more effective and hopefully greatly advance my verbal & listening abilities.
I could have used the school that meets closer at Jaco Beach with 4 hours of Spanish a day combined with 4 hours of surfing lessons a day, but decided that was probably not best for me! 🙂 So instead, I chose a school in Heredia, just beyond Alajuela, where I will spend one week as my February travel experience at about half the price of most birding trips. I will live with a Tico family within walking distance of the school where I will have 4 hours of intensive Spanish Language Classes every day along with a few local field trips using the language (I’m going for InBio and Toucan Rescue Ranch), plus the Tico family speaks only Spanish in their house, which may be where I learn the most! 🙂 The name of this school is Tico Lingo and it is just one of many all over Costa Rica – but not one in Atenas.
These schools are packed with high school & college students in the U.S. Summer when school is out! Six weeks is common for them with some doing two months straight through. I am not sure my senior adult brain could handle that much immersion, so I am trying one week and then if it goes well will more likely do more single weeks scattered over the year and not straight through. MY NEXT ADVENTURE! Last week of February! And hopefully it will motivate me to do more in my Spanish Blog, Aprendo español en Atenas and not switch to Spanish on this blog! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!