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I finally got all those photos sorted, culled, and processed to create a nice gallery for this year’s Oxcart Parade, my first since 2018! You can click the image below of the first page of that gallery or go to this address . . . https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/PEOPLE/2024-08-11-OXCART-PARADE
Or below is one sample photo from each category gallery . . .
Continue reading “2024 Oxcart Parade”
. . . my first to see in 5 years now and hopefully I will be able to handle the heat and sunshine if it’s as hot as yesterday! I’m planning to find a place to sit on the steps of La Tribunal near the point where the parade first enters the Central Park area, so I can leave as soon as over or earlier if it is too hot. Wearing my wide-brim hat, taking an umbrella and yes, smearing myself with that awful sunscreen, 50 SPF! My oncologist requires it! 🙂
It may be another day or two before I get to posting photos of this Oxcart Parade, but below are links to the three previous parades I photographed before Covid. I missed 2015 & 2019 and then it was canceled for 2020 through 2022 during the Covid Pandemic and last year they moved it from April to August and I did not get the word, so glad to try and see it this year. I’m posting my usual nature blog posts a few days ahead, so there will still be one of those today and again on whatever day I post today’s photos! 🙂 And for now, here’s 4 more photos from the past . . .
Continue reading “Oxcart Parade Today . . .”
are the 10th & 11th of August. The public is invited . . .
I’m posting this because many local people don’t seem to know about it or when what is happening. In short, what expats call the “Oxcart Parade” is at 11 am on Sunday 11 August. You can figure out the rest. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Juan Santamaria was a young man from Alajuela who became one of the few ever “war heroes” in the only significant battle Costa Rica fought in the 1800s when a renegade army of southern Americans came down to claim Central America as slave states and a part of the confederacy. Well, they had temporary control of Nicaragua above us and so the Costa Rica army marched in to keep them out of Costa Rica. Young Juan sneaked behind the enemy line with a torch and set fire to all of the American tents and barracks that had been set up. They all ran and that was the end of making Central America a slave state!
Juan Santamaria Day is actually April 11 (once de abril) but like the U.S., government workers and bankers have moved most of such holidays to the nearest Monday, thus this year is today, Monday, 15 April 2024.
The hometown of Juan still celebrates it on the real day, once de abril, and I happened to be in Alajuela on April 11 getting a letter from Aeropost and on my way to my favorite Mexican Restaurant, Jalapenos, I had to cross the parade street and phone-snapped these two shots of the band from private Catholic High School, Colegio Gregorio Jose Ramirez Castro. Work that name into a ball game cheer! 🙂
The Mexican food was better than the parade, so glad I kept walking! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Semana Santa is Spanish for “Holy Week” or “Easter Week” if you prefer and my most memorable and colorful one since moving to Costa Rica was 8 years ago (2016, my 2nd year here) while on a birding tour of Nicaragua and during Semana Santa I was for 3 days in the historical colonial town of Grenada where from my old hotel across from the oldest church I could watch the nightly processionals that along with architecture and the later 87 species of birds photographed made it my most colorful and memorable Easter Week here! (Linked to my photo gallery of that week.)
He is Risen!
¡Pura Vida!
See all the good photos in the GALLERY: 2023 Christmas Parade Atenas. And to introduce the gallery, here’s 5 shots from the 4 sub-galleries . . .
Celebrate Your Unique Talent Day (November 24): You may not be a basketball star or have the lead role in the school play, but you have a talent or two to celebrate. Maybe you can whistle every song on Taylor Swift’s new album. Or balance 27 stacked Legos on your fingertip. Whatever your talent, share it with friends and family today. 🙂 And I will continue to share my nature photography on this blog! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
See the many talents here in Costa Rica and the many ways they celebrate them in my GALLERY: PEOPLE, FIESTAS & ARTS Costa Rica
This past Friday was the 15th of September, Independence Day for Costa Rica, when in 1821 it shed the colonial rule of Spain. In this small but very significant little developing country, patriotism is big and almost everyone wears red, white & blue and many decorate their houses with banners and flags. I wore my national futbol (soccer) shirt, red, white & blue! 🙂
And almost every town of any size has a parade, usually featuring their local schools, and Atenas is no exception! 🙂 I have for several years now been photographing it most years (when not traveling) with galleries for those years included in my super-gallery: PEOPLE, FIESTAS & ARTS Costa Rica. Which of course now includes a gallery for this year’s 2023 Desfile del Día de la Independencia, Atenas. And here is a sample photo from each of the 7 sub-galleries in this year’s parade gallery . . .
With local activities returning after two years of none because of Covid, Atenas had only the second Tope (= horse show or horse parade). For years the city had stopped it because the horse people had been trashing the town with what was almost a drunken brawl. Well it started again just before Covid and with the pandemic over, is on again. And theirs is unique in that it is at night which supposedly allows for more participation. Well, my evaluation is not very positive. The first two dozen or more horses were ridden by serious horse people with well disciplined horses just before it became dark. Then as if queued by the darkness, hundreds of horses chaotically rode all over the streets, back and forth, with a large percentage of the cowboy wannabes drinking beer and other liquor handed them by people in the audience from their ice chests. There was no order and no particular beauty. I would personally prefer a tope in the daylight with no beer or other alcohol. But I don’t have to go next year and probably will not. I like the Oxcart Parade better anyway! 🙂
That’s one pix for the email announcement and online is a slide show of my poor quality night photos.