charliedoggett.net
It took longer after this trip to put the gallery together with a lengthy flurry of activities and first of year requirements, but my Christmas Trip of 2023 December 22-28 — San Gerardo de Dota, Hotel Savegre is ready to visit with all my birds, other wildlife, flowers and landscapes ready to view!
Google sent me this map showing everywhere I went in 2023 and that motivated me to make a little travel map for my planned 5 trips in 2024, which again is a slight decrease from the previous year as I slow down a little – but not too much! :-) I really need to get to different parts of Costa Rica to maintain a variety in my nature photos! Though all of these 5 lodges for 2024 are favorites I’ve visited before, they are all good and will yield a lot of photos! :-)
I make many of my reservations nearly a year in advance because of the popularity of most of these and they fill up fast! (Especially Christmas Week!) One example is that I tried to get in Selva Verde Lodge Sarapiqui in March and there was no vacancy! But I’m glad I will go back to Villa Lapas near me instead, while it is still locally operated, because in the next year or so it will become a Marriott and thus much more expensive and who knows if it will be better or worse? It is next door to Carara NP and the Tarcoles Crocodile Safari Boat tours that I like and they have now added a jungle tree top bridge and other activities, along with their pretty good birding reserve. We will see what happens in the future with Marriott. :-)
Including local obviously and the 4 points on the Caribbean side are one trip that include separate flags for 2 national parks, the airport & the hotel. And the 6 flags in the north represent 4 trips. :-)
Somehow I missed scheduling Corcovado, Osa Peninsula or the South Pacific this year, but that puts it at the top of the list for 2025! :-) And to see what my trips and places are like, visit my Costa Rica TRIPS Galleries. If you are planning on a trip to Costa Rica, you can tell a lot about some of these lodges and parks by the photos I post there for each trip.
Buenos viajes para . . .
¡Pura Vida!
🙂
No big surprise for those of us who live here, but Costa Rica was named as the #1 Travel Destination for 2024 by Travel & Leisure Magazine AND the International Living Magazine and organization simultaneously named Costa Rica as the #1 Best Place to Retire in 2024! Read about it in Travel & Leisure. Or on International Living website.
For someone who made what a few American friends back in Nashville thought was a radical or crazy decision to move here in 2014, these announcements confirm the good decision I made back then! :-)
And these rankings are a good celebration of my 9 years of living in Costa Rica (as of December 24, 2023 — 2+ weeks ago). And my survival of cancer a celebration of the excellent healthcare here! Plus there is no better place for a nature lover and nature photographer like me! Tell your nature-lover friends to follow my blog to see what it is like to be “Retired in Costa Rica!” :-)
¡Pura Vida!
Yesterday was the last morning birding hike with my friend from British Columbia and Walter took us to a new nature reserve for me, Reserva Madre Verde near Palmares which is north of Atenas, a 30 minute drive through beautiful mountains (or maybe hills). :-)
Our two hour hike up & down a hill had a 300 meter rise in altitude was good for us 80-somethings! We heard lots of birds but in a fairly thick forest we did not see as many as the other two birding hikes. I got photos of only 3 birds – BUT – I’m still happy because I got photos of 9 different species of butterflies, which took me all afternoon to identify and process the photos AND I got 3 new species for me! :-) So a very good 2-hour hike! Below is a gallery with one shot of each of the 9 butterflies after this one shot for the email version of post . . .
Just one photo that is linked to my Trip Gallery Grounds & Gardens Sub-Gallery with more photos and then in a few days I will share some really beautiful flowers, but this week has become overwhelming and I will be a few days later processing my flower photos with a guest from Canada here, medical lab work tomorrow at the National Hospital de Geriatria in San Jose, a trip to a new nature reserve for me Thursday with my Canadian friend and removing all my stuff from the Galería on Saturday. A really full week! But I see tranquility in next week! :-)
¡Pura Vida!
This is my last week (8-13 January) in the Galería Artenas in the Calle 2 Plaza next to Linea Vital Medical Plaza. Everything there is available below my cost and I will no longer be selling my photo art directly in Atenas or anywhere else except for awhile the photo greeting cards will be available at Hotel Colinas del Sol (after 13 January).
Everything else I have been selling will continue to be available online through links above on this website, charliedoggett.net, in my Gallery, Bookstore, and CafePress “Costa Rica Photo Art!” Happy shopping! :-)
And for the last time this week you can see and touch before you buy as you help me clear out my inventory at Galería Artenas! :-)
Nature as Art
¡Pura Vida!
I am immensely grateful for each and every one of you who read my blog regularly, occasionally or just look at the photos! My site host reports more that 2,000+ “hits” online at my website/blog every month! 🙂 And that doesn’t count many of the 500+ subscribers who only look at the email version nor most of the 650 Facebook Friends who look at the one feature photo without clicking the the link to the post!
I also appreciate the hundreds of comments left on the posts monthly and many “contacts” or messages through my contact page or by email. Just yesterday I responded to a man in England with questions about photographing wildlife at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge and a friend in the States commented with a meaningful Bible verse about my post yesterday on hugging the 800 year old tree. Nature is fun! :-) And you who read or just look at the pictures are the ones who make it fun for me! :-) THANKS! Keep reading or looking at the pix! And click the gallery links for more pix!
As usual, I’m ending the year with 12 photos from this year, equaling one per month but not literally from each month, since some months have weaker or fewer photos. Nor are these necessarily my top 12 favorite photos from this year, but are representative 2023 photos from “Retired in Costa Rica” this year, with birds and butterflies obviously being two favorite subjects again! :-) One shot here for the email version and eleven more online with a quick click below of “Read More”!
Of course many choose to hike all the way up to several different trails and the Mirador (vista platform) which I did last time here, but I chose the jeep ride up and down this time with just a short nature trail which I will tell about tomorrow. Here’s one shot of the jeep we road up in with its dog co-pilot! :-) I road with a 3-generation Tico family on vacation there, a 3 or 4 year old boy, his parents and grandparents. The two weeks either side of Christmas are vacation time for most government employees and many big companies not involved in retail sales of course! :-) Thus half or more of the people at the hotel were Ticos. The rest were tourists from the States, Canada, Australia, and all over Europe. Another charming thing about traveling about Costa Rica! :-)
See some other photos in my gallery: 4×4 Jeep Ride up the Mountain. And tomorrow some photos from our hike on the Pioneers Trail!
¡Pura Vida!
Right after breakfast in a garden behind the restaurant I got several shots of this male and a few weaker shots of the female Yellow-bellied Siskin – Spinus xanthogastrus (eBird link). Because the wifi or internet is weaker or slower here I will be trying to use only one photo per post but to include both male & female, two photos today! :-)
See my gallery of Yellow-bellied Siskin with more shots from this morning. This morning I went to a new garden on the hotel campus and have a lot of photos of a lot of birds that I will slowly share, one bird at a time and then tomorrow morning I plan to go to Batsu Gardens across the road for even more birds. I did get a couple of butterflies this morning and a caterpillar, but this trip will be mostly birds it appears! :-)
¡Pura Vida!
As always, my faithful driver, Walter, got me through all the Christmas traffic going around San Jose and up to my mountain hideaway in Hotel Savegre, San Gerardo de Dota. This time his wife Gabby and their year old daughter got to ride with us through the traffic of one wreck, lots of Christmas shoppers and half of Costa Rica beginning their summer vacation this weekend! I treated them to a late lunch at Savegre and the waiter made this photo. And believe it or not a Resplendent Quetzal visited us in a tree by our outside dining area. And my camera was not with me! 🙁
Mountain flowers are different from those in the lowlands, so one of my first shots was of flowers and there will be many more! :-)
¡Pura Vida!