charliedoggett.net
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| Cimarrona (small band) Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| This time the band was paid to play for this politician who was talking to people and giving out literature. An election is coming up soon in Atenas, Costa Rica |
Definition of a Cimarrona on Wikipedia
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| Soccer Fields are the most defining thing of a community in Costa Rica even along a dirt road among farms out in the country! Necessary! Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Mango Tree Grove Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Lots of Purple and Yellow Flowers if you look close Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Calle Nueva Atenas, Costa Rica |
After the walk we had a late lunch in a little Soda in the village of Rio Grande on the river of same name and our expressway Ruta 27 where there is an Atenas exit just south of Atenas. In this same little village is a chicken processing plant (low-pay jobs) owned my Walmart and a small air conditioner plant, both on the expressway. We road the local bus back to Atenas Central which went by these two job sources locally. And back in town a political experience which I will share tomorrow. See the Photo Gallery Walking Calle nueva – PS: WARNING! I learned later that two days before this walk an expat man from Canada was walking this same road solo (as I often go) and he was robbed at knifepoint by two young men on motorcycles, supposedly Nicaraguans, which is who most Ticos blame crime on. This is highly unusual in little Atenas, but of course can happen anywhere. It is more common in parts of the big city of San Jose.
International Living magazine again ranks Costa Rica the #1 Place to Retire!
The USA Today article on Costa Rica, the Country Without an Army & the Happiest Country
“Blessed is the Costa Rican mother who knows her son at birth will never be a soldier.”
Read your National Geographic magazine every month this year for more about birds and . . .
See this very short Thank You Video from The Cornell Lab. Or go to Cornell Lab Website to see how you can participate in helping birds.
Or just for fun, browse through my collection of Birds photos since moving to Costa Rica . . .
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| Screen Shot of BIRDS gallery opening page |
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| Medellin, Colombia |
Last year one of my neighbors, an 84 year old lady, decided to change her retirement from living in the Central Valley of Costa Rica to the huge city of Medellin, Colombia (above photo). It was her son’s idea and he was promising to move there also and work from there (though he hasn’t done that yet). Thus I was interested in Christopher Howard’s comparison article on his “Live in Costa Rica” website blog today (just click title to read):
Costa Rica (Central Valley) vs Medellín: a difficult comparison
Disclaimer: His article is more a city comparison than a country comparison in my opinion.
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| San Jose, Costa Rica |
Like so many other things, it boils down to a matter of personal taste and interests and maybe even more so what you have experienced in each place before deciding to move there. You absolutely must make several visits to a place before you decide to live the rest of your life there! Tours like Chris’s are very helpful but you also need to visit on your own. I visited Costa Rica 4 times before moving and even more visits would have been better, though it was kind of “love at first sight” for me.
My old neighbor lives in a high-rise apartment in the middle of a huge city, Medellin. (So a real comparison would be to an apartment in downtown San Jose.) I live in a semi-rural setting on the edge of a small farming town. A huge difference! Yet I’m an hour from everything the big city offers and I have quicker access to every corner of my smaller country, Costa Rica, than she has to her larger country of Colombia. That is important to me as I seek to photograph birds and other nature in national parks, reserves, etc. She has close-by more dining, shopping variety, arts, theaters, concerts and other urban entertainment close at hand than I do. So what is important to you? We are all different with different priorities. And we have a very stable government in Costa Rica while Columbia is, well, hoping to be! Better now than in several generations!
Someone could similarly compare (and Chris probably has in the past) retirement in Costa Rica to Panama which is more Americanized and has more English spoken and maybe more cosmopolitan if in Panama City or its suburbs. Two visits there told me that overall I wouldn’t like living there as well as in Costa Rica for my love of nature. While for nature and birding, Nicaragua (our other neighbor) would be competitive with Costa Rica or close maybe, but the questionable government and less-developed infrastructure keeps it from being quite as appealing, though cost of living would be a lot lower than Costa Rica and a big plus! I visited there twice also and I could live there after my Spanish is better, but Spanish is absolutely needed there! Ecuador has been pushed by the International Living magazine, because I think they have real estate investments there. I tried that magazine for a year and basically don’t trust them, though you can glean a lot of information from it. Just beware of them speaking authoritatively. For now, I am quite pleased with my choice of Costa Rica and still working on getting to know this country better. Eventually I will have visited all of the National Parks and many reserves. But to absorb all of the nature and photograph it will take the rest of my life and that sounds like a good plan! 🙂
International Living magazine again ranks Costa Rica the #1 Place to Retire! FLASH addition
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| Red-eyed Tree Frog Tortuguero, Costa Rica by Charlie Doggett |
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| A pastoral vista like this sometimes requires a trip far away from a busy town, yet I found this one maybe 500 meters from my house as the crow flies and maybe twice as far walking the streets to this spot. Calle Nueva, Atenas Costa Rica |
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| The cow pasture across the street from my house. A stream runs under that row of trees on opposite side. On the other side of the stream and to the left is a little known street, Calle Nueva, Atenas Costa Rica |
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| First I walk into town on Avenida 8 and turn left on Calle 1 making another left turn at next street, Avenida 10 for 2 blocks where I walk past our technical high school above. The pavement stops just past the school and I’m on a gravel road called Calle Nueva, Atenas Costa Rica |
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| It is so cool to suddenly be in the country! Past Roca Verde it becomes a dirt road going on to Rio Grande village. Calle Nueva, Atenas Costa Rica |
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| After 200 or 300 meters on a rise you see Roca Verde up ahead, those roofs. Before I saw this, I saw the pastoral scene photo above, my opening photo. Calle Nueva, Atenas Costa Rica |
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| Then down that hill to a bridge behind the Roca Verde duplex facing the pasture. That house is about one block from my house! But seen here from behind on Calle Nueva, Atenas Costa Rica |
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| The little stream opposite the cow pasture in front of my house. Which the above bridge crosses over behind the duplex. Calle Nueva, Atenas Costa Rica |
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| At the foot of the bridge I snap this shot of the cow pasture in front of my house from the backside. The duplex and two single family houses are to the right of those shrubs, all facing the cow pasture. Calle Nueva, Atenas, Costa Rica |
–JOHN MUIR, US naturalist, 1838—1914
If it the link works, here is the Google Map showing where I walked:
And I was having so much fun on my anniversary day of December 24 that I forgot to mention it in the blog post that night or celebrate. You may remember that I had Christmas Eve Dinner Around the Pool with Friends. It was that night three years ago that a taxi brought me and 5 suitcases from San Jose Airport to Atenas (late plane meant arriving after dark) to Hacienda La Jacaranda Apartments where I lived my first 4 months in Atenas Costa Rica. On this anniversary I was too busy to even think about it! 🙂 “The past is prologue!” Maybe I will have a celebration when I’ve been here 5.5 years on my 80th birthday. 🙂
And earlier that same happy day I saw my first King Vulture in the wild and got a photograph! Along with a juvenile King Vulture and other birds and wildlife on what my guides called “Raptor Ridge” on a hill above the Tambor Bay beach resort where I was staying. It was a great day! And the day before I got to release 12 baby Olive Ridley Turtles into the Pacific Ocean, so why would I think about it being my 3-year anniversary of living here? 🙂
Well, a lot has happened in three years and I’m quite at home here now, loving life in a little mountain coffee-farming town, learning to speak Spanish, though very slowly! Trying to have as many Tico friends as gringos and maybe more now!
My passion is finding and photographing some of the over 900 species of birds here along with other nature photography and the thrill of traveling Costa Rica. I have learned to travel as the locals do on buses to anywhere in Costa Rica, though I am a sissy old man who sometimes goes to the far away places on a little local plane, Sansa or Nature Air. Some of my Tico friends say I’ve seen more of their home country than they have and I probably have. I try to go somewhere new every month or two and of course report on these trips in progress on my blog (here) as well as in photo galleries in what I call Charlie Doggett’s COSTA RICA. And I even have a series of photo books on many of the birding lodges and national parks I have visited. I can’t get rid of the desire to create something! It is fun to me! And I do none of it for money (it actually costs me) but as my fun hobby.
I have Pensionado Residencia with the government health plan called CAJA (better than Medicare) and I am settling in for the rest of my life here with paperwork done for my body to be donated to the University of Costa Rica Medical School. I am not active in church but attend a little Bible Church here some, trying to avoid the right-wing Americans that also attend some, most only on the one Sunday a month with English translation. My goal this year is to attend mostly on the Español only Sundays.
I have volunteered service to the Angel Tree project, three schools, my language school, and most recently led an after school club at one high school which I talked about 2 blog posts ago. I am trying to integrate into the community without becoming a catholic or marrying a Tica! 🙂 That is quite feasible.
I am overall healthy for a 77 year old (though walking a lot slower now believe it or not). I get plenty of rest and exercise walking everywhere. One of my best decisions was to not buy a car! Good for my health and budget! I eat well, sleep a lot, and I am very happy in my new home. So with this little summary, I place a marker down at my three-years point of living in Costa Rica. None of us know how long we will live, but I’m expecting many more years of adventures in Costa Rica! ¡Pura Vida!
🙂
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| January 2017 My garden was a constant joy! Blue Plumbago contrasted against a Heliconia |
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| February 2017 Two nights in San Jose was a fun and different trip for me. |
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| March 2017 The birds in my garden continue to amaze! Lineated Woodpecker |
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| April 2017 The bird sculpture by my former neighbor Anthony Jeroski will always be a special garden memory of him. He died in July in states. |
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| May 2017 One of my guides at Drake Bay, Carlos, with baby boa. Everywhere I go great guides make the trip memorable! |
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| June 2017 My gardners on break at my house, a tradition we have. I love my gardners and my garden! |
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| July 2017 At Rancho Naturalista I finally get a photo of a Sunbittern! This is a rare bird and rare photo that I’m proud of. |
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| August 2017 Butterflies are second only to birds for me and I saw a few this year. Most, like this one, in my garden of course! A Heliconius Hecale Zuleika. |
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| September 2017 This Squirrel Cuckoo was on edge of my terrace for a favorite photo at home or maybe my “Photo of the Year” or at least tied with the Sunbittern. 🙂 |
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| October 2017 My high school “after school club” for Conversational English was my most rewarding activity of the year! Fun & hard work! |
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| November 2017 This Triquitraque is one of the smallest and favorite flowers in my garden. |
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| December 2017 Everything about my Christmas trip to Tambor Bay was super good, but this photo of a King Vulture is the big prize! Another rare find & photo! |
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| My Conversational English Club at a local high school. Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Genuine Tico Food cooked on a Wood Fire El Fogon Campesino, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| Jason’ Quesada’s “Selfie” of Us Eating Here Today Our late lunch or early dinner for my two-meal day Jason is my Spanish language tutor, practicing español at El Fogon Campesino, Atenas, Costa Rica |
And my new word of the day is buenísimo, meaning “really, really good” or “the best.”
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| A Delightful, Homey, Family-Run Restaurant One of my favorite places to eat now! El Fogon Campesino, Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| The city recently thinned out the trees & painted bases & benches. Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Catholic ChurchSouth Side of Park, Facing North, (which doesn’t match stories about Costa Rica churches facing west so worshippers face east to Jerusalem) Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| La Cafeteria – The Coffee Shop Plus 3 other shops in corner building across from church Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Tribunales de Justicia, Court House Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Photography Shop Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Discount Groceries (Chinese store) This is in location of what was the largest Bar/Restaurant in Centro But a lack of business and illegal activities closed them down. Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| A Dress Shop Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| A busy Bakery on left + 3 little shops Bakery is only place to get coffee at 5 AM + Bus Stop is there! Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| And the next corner is an expensive Young Adult Clothing Shop Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| POP’S Ice Cream & Bar Punga Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Unknown Office Building & Shoe Repair Shop Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Mattress & Bedding Shop Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| A Lunch Only Soda Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Florist Downstairs & Apartment Upstairs Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Banco Nacional – My Bank The other 2 banks are about a block away and notice the long line at the ATM at left, typical everywhere here. |
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| Pizzeria Olivera – The most popular Pizza for Ticos. Most expats prefer the thin crust pizza at La Finca a block away. Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| City Hall Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| I think it is an addition to the City Hall – Brand New! Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Women & Children’s Clothing + Fabrics & Patterns to Make Your Own Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| University Extension Classes Here Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
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| Clothing Store & Pharmacy The center of town at Calle 0 and Avenida 0 Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica |
One block down that street above to the right is the other big commercial area with the Central Market, Bus Station, 3 furniture stores, hardware store, 3 super markets, many clothing shops, gift shops, office supply, and our best discount store El Rayo, like a big dollar store in the states with cheap Chinese stuff. There is actually more shopping going on there than around Central Park. Maybe a post on that someday.