Category: Culture

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Supermarket Christmas & More!

They usually have a nativity, but for now just this tree and laurels around the entrance.

La Coope Supermercado, Atenas
Entrance to my favorite supermarket, La Coope, operated by the local coffee farmers’ cooperative. I try to keep my money local. 🙂 The other big supermarket is “Maxi-Pali,” a Walmart-owned junk store.
View of tree from other side, still in shadows. 🙂

My 2021 Christmas Photos Gallery

¡Feliz Navidad!

How Costa Ricans Celebrate Christmas . . .

The family that does “Two Weeks in Costa Rica” blog/newsletter has an article about what Ticos do during the holidays which is also “Summer Vacation” from school for all ages with graduations the middle of December and the start of new school year in February. Thus lots of “family vacations” during this time, especially the week between Christmas and New Years when many businesses and factories, etc are closed. The beaches and mountain lodges are full of Ticos that week! Everything is already festive by December 1 with many decorations up and special meal preparations started. Read about it in the Two Weeks guy’s article:

Christmas And New Years In Costa Rica: A Festive Time (“2 Weeks in CR” Blog Page)

Some of My Earlier Posts on CR Christmas . . .

Attending a Tamale-Making Class en Español 2017

2021 Christmas Photos

This Year’s Mall Christmas Trees 2021 Blog Post

2019 Christmas Trees here

2019 Atenas Christmas Parade

2020 Monkeying Around on Christmas Eve at Arenal Observatory where I will be again next Christmas or 2022. Good lodges like this one are booked solid for Christmas a year ahead. I just made my ’22 reservations.

My Christmas Poinsettias 2019

Birds & Tapir – A Perfect Christmas!

Christmas in Costa Rica 2018 (including a cute TV ad)

Madrigal Renaissance Christmas Banquet 2018 (all expats)

2017 Atenas Christmas Parade – one of the best!

Well . . . too many to list them all! You can do a blog search on “Christmas” for more! 🙂

My Indoor Poinsettia this year.

My 2021 Year in Books Read (Goodreads page).

Merry Christmas! – ¡Feliz Navidad!

¡Pura Vida!

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My “Hill Walk” Vista

Well, just one of many vistas from the hill above my house, but one of my favorite, the hilltop farm of the local farmers’ university here in Atenas, usually covered in cows. 🙂

Hilltop Farm next door to Roca Verde Residential Community.

And that’s the last photo to share from my “Walk up the Hill!” 🙂 Just 4 more days before I go to a Pacific Coast resort south of here for Christmas where I will do daily “same day” reports on that part of my paradise! 🙂 Happy Holidays!

¡Pura Vida!

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Man-made Bird?

On my walk up the hill the other morning a couple of little planes flew over and I decided to “capture” the second one in a photo! It is not one of our commercial passenger planes, Sansa Airlines, but some older private plane doing who knows what? 🙂

Plane flying over Atenas.

¡Pura Vida!

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Cloud Cuckoo Land a Must-read for . . .

. . . lovers of stories, books and libraries – the 3 main characters in this multi-layered story of totally different people from the 1450’s all the way through 2020 and to the future in 2164, all impacted by this fictitious lost and found story by a very early Greek writer who called his story “Cloud Cuckoo Land” (in Classical Greek of course!). It touches on so many life issues and about our own future on earth that I won’t try to list them all. You move between the stories of totally different people (ages 12 to 86) affected by Cloud Cuckoo Land (the Greek novel) in Constantinople (1450’s), Bulgaria (1450’s), Idaho (1940’s to 2020), Korea (1950’s), and outer space (2164) so that like his “All the Light” book (just 2 overlapping stories) you can get confused at first (if not more so). Eventually the many complicated pieces of the puzzle start coming together and you too begin to get what all these others are getting from Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is more multi-layered than Anthony Doerr’s previous classic All the Light We Cannot See (Goodreads Reviews), but just as impactful (if not more so) and will certainly become another classic! I highly recommend both books! 🙂

Read some other Goodreads Reviews of this NY Times best seller, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Now I will simplify my reading escapes with another Agatha Christie mystery! 🙂 Rest my simple mind which is still spinning from this read. 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

This book is my current read as the #1 on the New York Times best seller list by Pulitzer Prize winning author Anthony Doerr who wrote the best WWII novel I’ve read yet, All the Light We Cannot See that at first I found hard to read with two different parallel stories during WWII of a 12 year old girl in France and a 12 year old boy in Germany and of course their lives eventually cross. A powerful story! Worthy of all the awards! And now . . .

Continue reading “Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr”
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Morning Hill Walk

This morning ( 2 weeks ago today, as I’m really writing posts way ahead now) I took the difficult steep route up to the top of the hill I live on the side of and completed the circle drive back around to my house. I’ve done this only 2 or 3 times since radiation therapy and I’m okay with it, just slow going uphill. 🙂 Because of dogs on this route I walk with my walking stick and not the big camera, only cell phone, which I regretted today, seeing a Keel-billed Toucan in a distant tree and unable to photograph it well.

I will include two cellphone photos of the tree, one crop-zoomed in on the bird, but not good resolution. Then I tried to do a selfie with the village of Atenas in the background below the hill but the sun was too bright to catch the town in photo and it is before breakfast or even me shaving, so I’m “unkempt” but I’m showing the photo anyway! 🙂

Toucan on lower limb to right.
Keel-billed Toucan in poor zoom-crop of above photo.
Early-morning Selfie on Hill before Shave, Shower or Breakfast! Distant Atenas lost in the glare behind me.

For those concerned about my health, you can see that the left cheek is still swollen from the surgery and radiation (can take more than a year to go down) but the left side of smile has moved up a little bit and the eye is good uncovered for 2 to 4 hours in the morning before it hurts/burns and I then wear the black patch. I remove patch again for short times in afternoon and evening (easier reading with 2 eyes). And my Covid Mask is on my wrist here with no people around! 🙂

The Covid mask, 2 meter distancing & hand-washing is still required everywhere in Costa Rica and come January 8 the proof of vaccination will also be required to enter all public places, including supermarkets and restaurants. But remember, Costa Rica has a lower percentage of Covid cases than the U.S. with their stupid Republican Anti-vaxxers! 🙂 And if you want to visit this healthy country, you will need proof of vax just like the rest of us! By December we will have a vaccination app for cell phones here that will show some code for electronic readers at the entrance to all businesses, etc. Interesting! We’re pretty “high-tech” to be a “developing country.” 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Got My Vaccination QR Code!

I got it 2 days ago, on December 1. This is to prove that I have been fully vaccinated against Covid and tentatively starting January 8 will be required to enter all businesses and other public places just like the mask and handwashing. Vaccination Required in Costa Rica! They will have scanners at the entrance to scan the QR Code on my phone (or on a paper). Until then it is optional for businesses that want to be open at 100% capacity. Soon Costa Rica will be totally Covid-free! Everyone vaccinated! 🙂 Then all restaurants can use all their tables! 🙂

Biden tried in the States but the stupid Republicans stopped him and the vaccination requirement. Sure glad I live in Costa Rica now and not the States! We are very safe here and tourists are returning (if fully vaccinated) 🙂 and we are one of, if not the safest & healthiest country in the Americas! Pura Vida! The Red X and line through number is in case someone tries to copy my code! 🙂 Though an ID Card can be asked for which would make a copy not work anyway! 🙂 But I’m trying to be safe!

Continue reading “Got My Vaccination QR Code!”