This street I cross almost every day in Atenas ended at one street and across the vacant lots you could see it continued on the other side of that block. I wondered why they didn’t just continue the street or connect the two ends. Then one day more than a year ago they started.
First they graded the land on either side of the creek running down the middle of the block. Then they brought in a bunch of huge concrete culverts, placing two rows of them down the stream. Then covered those with gravel and dirt and more on top of everything until they finally black-topped a street where there was none. I figured they were finished.
No, they then added sidewalks on both sides of the street which is unheard of in Atenas. Still not enough! They built these beautiful stone walls above where the culverts were placed to make it look like a bridge. Finally (I think), they added ornaments, a 150th Anniversary Logo and a Municipal Council sign on the stone walls and someone else painted a mural on the wall protecting a house with a little sign saying “The Monkey Space.” I looked it up and found their Facebook Page as a gathering place for young adults wanting to volunteer in the community. Totally cool and another wonderful little spot in Atenas! What a cool town I live in!
Mural on the wall by “The Monkey Space” next to new bridge
Photos of New Street & Bridge
Click images below to enlarge or start a manual slideshow:
I had a package to pick up at Aeropost Alajuela Saturday morning, so I went early before they opened and had pancakes and sausage with coffee at the shiny new (remodeled) McDonalds Restaurant across from Central Park Alajuela. They’ve always had an upstairs with a balcony overlooking the park, just new and nicer now! Sorry I didn’t photograph their new modern furniture and white tile floors and walls, but nice.
Yes, the photo above was shot through large hole screen wire which is necessary to keep the park’s pigeons off your table and food! And remember, with perfect weather here, we need no air conditioning or heat, thus it is an open air restaurant like almost all here. It is very pleasant to me to eat a breakfast outside (as I always do at home) and here I enjoy watching Our Lady of the Pillar Cathedral also called Alajuela Cathedral and watching people in the park. It helps make my 45 minute free bus ride to Alajuela worth the time, plus I picked up my newest travel photo book on Rancho Humo. And read the Washington Post on the bus!
I was back home before 11 and had a quiet rest-of-the-day at home adding photos of Africa to my gallery and website. I introduced those new web pages yesterday. I enjoy life here!
On Safari in Masai Mara Reserve, Kenya, November 19, 2005
I am beginning a new stories section of my website titled Travel. It will eventually have many stories of my many trips around the world (outside Costa Rica) with some illustrative photos along with links to the newest section of my Photo Gallery titled Pre-Costa Rica Travels. where I am slowly creating a gallery on each trip over the years or at least the recent years, one at a time as I slowly move such photos from the Travel Section of my old Pbase gallery. PHOTO ABOVE: Masai Shepherd in Kenya
Writing the stories and moving the photos are both very slow and time-consuming jobs, but time is what an ol’ retiree has isn’t it? 🙂
For multiple reasons, I decided to start with Africa in both the Travel Stories and the Photo Gallery sections. The photos are mostly moved but all of the stories have not been written yet. I have a good start, especially with most of my Gambia stories already told here. Here’s what you can expect to find now:
TRAVEL STORIES
Driving from Nairobi, Kenya to Musoma, Tanzania, November 7, 2005
You find Travel on the main menu above with dropdown menus for stories started here and additional menu links on each country’s home page for related stories in other pages of the site. For example: my Gambia Missionary experiences and mission trips are on the HIS SPIRIT menu first and thus linked to there from this Travel Gambia Home Page or Kenya Home Page, etc. The software allows for drop down menus for only items initiated on that page, thus regular links to other pages like the missionary stories.
And since my photo galleries are actually on SmugMug.com, they cannot be on any of my site drop down menus but must be linked to from each country’s Home Page or found by going to the big gallery first from the above menu. I hope that is not confusing. Just use the country’s home page to find everything about that country. 🙂
I have only barely started on all the stories I want to tell, but for the main Travel section described above I have started these pages with more stories coming on each in the future:
Masai people in the Great Rift Valley near Masai Mara, Kenya
My travel photos made before moving to Costa Rica are in a special sub-gallery title Pre-Costa Rica TRAVELS. Like my Costa Rica Trips gallery they are arranged chronologically by dates of each trip with most recent at top. At this moment, I have only travels to Africa included. Click above to see all or here is the list of my Africa Travel Galleries which will later be mixed in with other travels depending on the dates:
When Lee Holloway introduced me to and gave me a copy of the 1931 historical adventures storybook Yankee Ships in Pirate Watersby Rupert Sargent Holland back in the early 1970’s while at The Brotherhood Commission, I had no idea how far it would lead in my future research of an 1800’s ship with my name.
For a long time I have had the research website on The Ship Charles Doggett (the definitive website on the ship) and along the way discovered the relationships of the ship to Nashville and a friend there who is a descendant of the ship’s captain, William Driver. Driver is buried in Nashville. (Click above link for more info.) Also while there I learned of the U.S. Flag first being called “Old Glory” while flying on the Brig Charles Doggett with the actual flag at The Smithsonian Institute National Museum in Washington, DC. My web page above tells exciting stories of the flag, especially during the Civil War in a Confederate State Capital.
Then later I learned that it was this ship that rescued the survivors of “Mutiny on the Bounty.” Wow! The stories go on and are many and exciting as presented in this one 48-page Chapter 7 of the 1931 book Yankee Ships in Pirate Waters by Rupert Sargent Holland.
As I have always intended to do, I finally scanned or used a print shopin Atenas to scan the pages of the stories for me. I now include those pages here. The chapter on The Charles Doggett is titled “Children of the Sun” and was introduced with this summary: “How the men of the ‘Charles Doggett’ angered a witch-doctor, fought Fiji cannibals, and saved a sister-ship from yellow pirates in the gulf of Tongking.” You can read the stories online here now at Chapter 7: Children of the Sun. A fun read! And just one more bit of valuable information on this website. 🙂
It is difficult to figure out everything they are doing or why they went 2 weeks doing nothing, but now they seem to be lowering the central portion where the band shell or gazebo will go -quite a bit lower – possibly for a good foundation. And now I can see that the square-block park was not as level all the way across as I thought. Possibly they will level it. Now they are removing dump trucks full of dirt from the center.
Taking many dump truck loads of dirt from the center of park.
On the right side it appears to be 3 to 4 feet lower than surrounding land.
Yep! I missed a couple of days posting anything. Always busy with daily chores and necessary trips to town and I have also been busy adding content to this website. I’ll tell you about that in the next couple of days’ posts. Exciting Stories!
The other day I came across this youth group painting an environmental message on the sidewalk at one of the busiest corners in Atenas Central in front of a furniture store, across the street from Mercado Central and across another street from our University Extension campus.
Everything can have another life: RECYCLE
They are painting messages on several well-traveled sidewalk corners in town too create ecological awareness (conciencias de ecologica) or awareness of global warming (conciencias de calentamiento global) for the people of Atenas. The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow and their actions speak well for our future.
Atenas Youth Create Ecological Awareness
On another corner earlier: Be aware of the city: REDUCE TRASH
Youth painting environmental message
Youth painting environmental message
Everything can have another life: RECYCLE
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
—Margaret Mead
Earth University
People from around the world study ecology at Costa Rica’s Earth University people who are changing the world for good (link is to English Language site)
Yes, it’s “Spring” here (la primavera) and almost the beginning of “Summer” (el verano) or Dry Season which starts in December. There are some trees and flowers that bloom this time of year while other bloom at the end of dry season and I can’t explain why because I don’t know. 🙂
I call these my “Yellow Bell Trees” because the flowers are bell-shaped, but that is not the name of them and I can’t seem to get an agreement here on what their English name is. I recently lost two of these trees, so less yellow this year in my garden, but it calls for a Haiku anyway:
I have been playing around with writing Haiku about Costa Rica Nature for nearly 3 years now and this is my little collection of poems, each printed on one of my photos. I’m not a poet, but it was fun to do and I may continue trying from time to time. I write the American 2-3-2 syllables style of Haiku but like the original Japanese Haiku they only describe nature.
On the hill above my little casita are blooming some brilliant orange African Tulip Trees (an immigrant or invasive species?) and above those the ever-present pink-to-purple bougainvillea which I see here through the limbs of my Guarumo or Cecropia tree. Having “colorful neighbors” can be a plus! And colorful flowers add to my happiness! 🙂
Just living is not enough…
one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
~Hans Christian Andersen
Flowers help boost happiness and I was just introduced to a new website that you might want to check out: Garden & Happyfor a little boost in your happiness, try gardening! 🙂
