charliedoggett.net
HAPPY, HAPPY – – – to you and your family, friends, and communities this Christmas! While some of you enjoy a White Christmas, I will be enjoying the beaches and rainforests of Manuel Antonio National Park and the private Wildlife Refuge of Si Como No Resort there. – – – HAPPY, HAPPY! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Earlier I showed a photo of one side that was being painted as a mural, but had no idea it would become like this and it appears to be nearly finished. Click an image to see it larger and/or start a manual slide show:
Atenas is a small rural town where people expect to park on the street, but as it has grown and gained a lot of rich foreigners with multiple cars, parking lots are becoming necessary, though people everywhere are slow to adapt. This colorful place to park should help those not wanting to change and pay to park. It is colorful like our beautiful little town. See also the “old town” in the video below in the right column, titled “Atenas: Best Weather in the World.” A cool place to live!
¡Pura Vida!
http://www.blurb.com/b/9093011-costa-rica-haiku
I have been playing around with writing Haiku about Costa Rica Nature for nearly 3 years now and this is my little collection of poems, each printed on one of my photos. I’m not a poet, but it was fun to do and I may continue trying from time to time. I write the American 2-3-2 syllables style of Haiku but like the original Japanese Haiku they only describe nature.
¡Pura Vida!
Check out the free electronic preview of all pages of my latest Costa Rica photo book at: http://www.blurb.com/b/9079446-rancho-humo or click the book cover image below. Use “full screen mode” to best see these photo pages. I think my books & photos are getting a little better. 🙂
Charlie Doggett – Retired in Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!
I finally got all the photos sorted, processed, labeled and have them organized into my latest TRIPS sub-gallery: 2018 Rancho Humo, Palo Verde National Park — Next comes the book! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
We have both resident and migrant Yellow Warblers this time of year. This one looks like a juvenile and could be either resident or migrant.
I have started my online Photo Gallery on Rancho Humo, but just the BIRDS section is taking longer than I thought, so it will be a few days before finished. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Thursday the 15th my driver drove back from Atenas to Rancho Humo and joined me for lunch before we drove back to Atenas. Before breakfast I caught the sunrise, el amanecer, then walked around the ranch one more time. Here are some of the photos I made on my last morning walk there as a slideshow.
¡Pura Vida!
Another day of “Retired in Costa Rica” with Charlie Doggett!
Why would anyone retire anywhere else? 🙂
There is plenty to see and photograph on the 5,000+ acres of Rancho Humo, birds, other wildlife, and scenery! But across the river from the ranch is another wonderful and large Costa Rica park: Palo Verde National Park.
Tomorrow (Wednesday) I float down the river for a different experience in the park. But here are 3 slideshows for what was seen on Tuesday on a 6 km hike and posting here on Wednesday. Will post boat trip later today or tomorrow.
My 4 pm afternoon walk ended up being partly with a young couple from Germany who checked in the hotel today along with a separate American couple, so I no longer get all the attention of the staff! 🙂 This German couple are going with me on the hike into the national park tomorrow morning.
My other new friends were a group of Yellow-naped Parrots that live only in the Northwest of Costa Rica and thus my first time to see. They are also popular for pets and thus now endangered, so a really good photo find and a “Lifer” for me. Click the name link above for Cornell University’s Neotropical Birds article with map of the few places they still live in the wild and a recording of their sounds which I heard live today. This kind of wildness is going to disappear one of these days if humans don’t change their ways.
¡Pura Vida!
All of these birds were photographed on the Rancho Humo hotel property (100’s of acres of farmland) with some fields flooded by a tidal irrigation system from the Tempisque River. Many of the fields are shared with some of the 800 cows they have here along with wild deer, howler monkeys, and all the smaller wildlife like coatis and iguanas, etc. Tomorrow I go into the Palo Verde National Park which will probably give me some new birds along with some of these. CLICK AN IMAGE TO SEE LARGER or to begin a slideshow with larger images than the automated slideshow.
Rancho Humo Estancia on Rio Tempisque
See how I “rough it” in luxury in Costa Rica:
¡Pura Vida!