It is a long drive (4+ hours) to Boca Tapada and beyond for the lodge plus we had to stop for a car repair and then lunch, but here by about two where I crossed the river by ferry to a truly isolated rainforest lodge you cannot get to by car. At check-in were two types of toucans and many other birds to greet me and I was taken to my most unusual room, a steel structured platform (secure) 20 meters above the ground built around giant virgin almond trees, thus my cabin name (español) Almendro. Three flights of stairs and a lot of steps! And so amazing! I am literally among the birds and other tree life! Writing this at dinner as the only place with Wifi. And in the jungle is luxury cream of squash soup, tilapia with risotto and pineapple flambe for dessert.
The Treehouse Up Close
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My 1st walk through the grounds
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What Sunset looks like through a rainforest canopy
Tomorrow I will begin exploring the virgin rainforests & wetlands of Maquenque Lodge & Reserve in Boca Tapada, Northeast Costa Rica though still in Alajuela Province, yet on the Caribbean Slope, not far from the Nicaragua border. The link on name above is to their website, telling their story. The first video clip below is about their
NATURE, THE REASON I TRAVEL COSTA RICA!
AND MY KIND OF LODGE WITHIN THE NATURE!
I have one of the treehouse rooms . . .
living like Tarzan! 🙂
Their WELCOME to Maquenque Lodge:
Treehouse
Monkeys near my room
On a river
NOTE: They have WiFi only in public areas, not in the rooms meaning I will be more limited on doing a daily blog post, but I will try! Maybe at dinner?
Anytime you are dealing with groups of people there are complications and changes and this happened with the First Baptist Nashville group that were coming back to Atenas to work again in the Hogar de Vida Children’s Home this April. Pam told me yesterday that it did not work out, so instead of a week with them I now have scheduled a week in the Quaker town of Monteverde in April and already scheduling guided birding hikes while there. 🙂
Rare Three-wattled Bellbird I photographed at Selvatura Monteverde in 2016
I limit myself to one birding trip a month and somehow for 2 years now I have not been able to get back to Monteverde where I had only 2.5 days back in 2016 on a Birding Club Trip that I added an extra night to but still did not have enough time for all the reserves and other places for nature. I’ll stay 6 nights this time with my first priorities guided birding hikes in three reserves: Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve (or Official Site in English), Santa Elena Reserve (or Official Site in Spanish), and Curi-Cancha Reserve. That’s three days! Then a really good commercial nature reserve there called Selvatura that has the longest canopy hanging-bridges in the country plus a fabulous butterfly garden & hummingbird garden and more! That will be another full day, to which I will then add shorter trips like one of the best night hikes in the country, the excellent Monteverde Butterfly Garden, not to mention the trails and gardens at the Monteverde Lodge & Gardens where I will be staying. A full and fulfilling week! 🙂 So Nashville guys, I will miss you, but not be bored! 🙂
And I change my 2019 Trips Map with #4 (April) moved from Atenas to Monteverde.
Yes, I actually have some regular readers of my blog and several I have never met, some of whom are contemplating retiring in Costa Rica. One from Texas, a bigger birder than me, has visited several times and is possibly going to move somewhere in Central Valley here next year in retirement, with Atenas one option. One “Retired in Costa Rica” Wannabe from California has been planning a nature photography trip here for months, writing me for advice and with questions. She arrived today with a local flight to the Osa Peninsula in the morning but needed something to do today. I took her toAnimal Rescate Zoo Avein La Garita today with her hotel reasonably close to the airport for her flight out in the morning.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In 2020this facility has been “rebranded” to eliminate the zoo concept and is now called Rescate Wildlife Rescue Center.
We did not finish our walk through the zoo because her camera battery went dead with her other one left in the hotel, but I got a few photos shown below. Note that 4 of the animals in today’s animal gallery or slideshow below were “wild” or not part of the zoo collection! 🙂
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
Flame Vine or Triquitraque
Morning Glory
Once de Abril
Crown of Thorns
Desert Rose
Yellow Bells (my name)
Poinsettia
Porterweed, a type of Verbena: Stachytarpheta
Plumbago
Tibouchina or Princess Flower
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!
