Costa Rica Leads in Banning Plastic

Costa_Rica_relief_location_map-Palo-VerdeTiny little Costa Rica is leading the way by banning disposable plastic. See these neat little videos about the effort:

Costa Rica Is Leading the Way  (1:28)

We Can Save the World   (3:00)

Banning Disposable Plastic   (14:36)

Costa Rica Is First  –  the prettiest video is on my facebook page as a share.

 

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.”
—Jane Goodall

¡Pura Vida

For My New Hampshire Friends

New Hampshire Fall Trip, October 5, 2004
Kancamagus Highway October 5, 2004

One section of my photo gallery was recently added as Pre-Costa Rica TravelI am slowly adding one trip at a time until it is finished, starting with my Latin American travels since that is where I live now.  🙂

But one couple living in snowy New Hampshire just left their winter visit to Atenas to return home until their trip next January which will be longer or two months next year. They are not sure yet about retiring here, but wrote to say that my blog keeps them looking forward to their annual trek here.

Well, their message reminded me of my only trip to New Hampshire which was a fall color photography trip in 2004. including lots of vistas and 22 covered bridges along with many of my other interests!  So I just got motivated (by new friends) and added this photo gallery ahead of schedule with some of my favorite fall color shots. See this “New” old travel gallery now included here – CLICK Linked Title Below:

2004 October – New Hampshire

A part of the joy of being “Retired in Costa Rica” is occasionally remembering old times and places which is something my photography and Gallery provide, along with the personal pages of my Blog/Website on the top menu above (still being developed). And of course I continue my regular reports on Costa Rica!   🙂   My first love now!

“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
― Karl Lagerfeld

¡Pura Vida!

Punta Leona Photo Gallery

I really got a lot of good photos on this last trip and finally have them culled and organized into a gallery for the trip. See this newest photo gallery at:

2019 Mar 5-10 – Punta Leona

I’m not doing a photo book on this trip yet but plan on a book of the area after two more trips there, giving a broader picture of the Jaco-Carara Mid-Pacific Costa Rica. I have trips to that area in both June and July, so a book in August maybe? And it will include my earlier trips to Carara, Tarcoles and Jaco – so maybe a larger-format book. Change is good.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

~ Marcel Proust

¡Pura Vida!

Fiery-billed Aracari

For more than 4 years I have been trying and hoping to get a good photo of a Fiery-billed Aracari (Neotropical Birds Link for description), one of the unique and more rare smaller toucans found only on the Pacific slope of southern Costa Rica and western Panama. I really expected to photo one at Punta Leona last week but the only one seen was at a great distance up a mountain and impossible to photograph.

In 2016 I got one shot of a Fiery-billed in a high tree at Los Campesinos Ecolodge, Quebrada Arroyo, Naranjito, Costa Rica, up the mountain from Quepos on the Pacific (Not a very good photo.). I also got one shot of an injured Fiery-billed at the ZooAve in La Garita, but it is wild birds I want!

Thus I was surprised and thrilled Tuesday morning when on my terrace for breakfast around 7, five young Fiery Billed Aracaris flitted between my Strangler Fig Tree and my Guarumo or Cecropia Tree. They were socializing and eating what appeared to be leaves on the fig tree. Here’s 20 of nearly 200 photos I quickly snapped before they left. As Alice said, “There’s no place like home!”  and though our part of Central Valley is on the Pacific Slope, it is mid-Pacific and not southern Pacific where they say these aracaris are. So I consider myself quite fortunate! I think they are juveniles and probably siblings or one might be the parent. 

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Being in the right place at the right time!

🙂

¡Pura Vida!

 

See all my Fiery-billed Aracari photos or all of my Costa Rica Birds.

Macaw Project – Punta Leona

One of the reasons I chose to stay five nights in the Jaco Beach area of Costa Rica (a heavily visited and touristy area I usually avoid) is because I read about the Scarlet Macaw Project and Hotel Punta Leona’s installation of Nesting Boxes. All Macaws are somewhat endangered because they require a large hole in a big old tree to nest and most big ol’ trees have been cut down. Thus mankind has found a way to help replace what we destroyed by installing nesting boxes for the Macaws to nest in, thus continuing the species. It is a bigger problems on the Caribbean side of CR with the more endangered Green Macaws as helped there by the Manzanillo ARA Project I visited it in 2016 near Manzanillo. The ARA Project is also on the Pacific side focused on the Scarlet Macaws at Punta Islita which I have not visited yet.  Another hotel on the Pacific side that has Scarlet Macaw nesting boxes is the Tambor Tropical Resort, Tambor Bay, I visited in 2017. So I’m happy to see this, another project that helps save an endangered species!

Hotel Punta Leona has many nesting boxes installed over their heavily wooded property and a new exciting thing is that about 5 boxes have REAL TIME CAMERAS where you can watch the babies in the nests. Cool! Just click the real time link. In the photos below you will see a wire running into one of the nests – that’s the camera!   🙂

Here’s a few shots of Scarlet Macaws I made at Punta Leona:

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Learn more about this beautiful but endangered species, the Scarlet Macaw at Neotropical Birds

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

 

FUTURE DREAM – Birding in Columbia

I have often said I would leave Costa Rica only to visit other nearby countries birding and thought that Ecuador would be next – but I just saw the following video (short movie) from E-Birds that has now turned my attention toward Columbia. To see why, watch this little movie called BIRDING: A Musical Journey through Northern Columbia  —  I love living in this incredible region of the world! So much to see/do!

¡Pura Vida!

Punta Leona Grounds

The development is so large and much of it private that I cannot begin to show all that is there, but here’s some shots of the public or hotel guest available areas with two shots up two private residential streets. It is an old development that has a lot!

General Grounds Shots

 

Flowers

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Public Art

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“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

~Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

¡Pura Vida!

Selvamar Rooms at Punta Leona

Punta Leona is big and hotel rooms are in different clusters – mine in Selvamar, Haiti Sidewalk (Between Cuba & Jamaica Sidewalks) where each group of little cabins is named after a Latin American country. So I was Selvamar, Haiti 852. It seems newer than some other areas of hotel rooms and has its own restaurant called Carabelas which is suppose to be Peruvian food, all three meals served buffet style. That is typical of a place that caters to tour buses of which there were a few here. And how Peruvian is debatable, though almost everything was good. I ate at the Mantas Beach restaurant Marinos twice and the Playa Blanca Restaurant once a la carte. Both featuring fast casual food. I don’t rate Punta Leona very high for food, but okay. The room was very nice and by putting the little sign on my doorknob “clean now” it was clean after breakfast every morning! Nice!

Like all of the many buildings at Punta Leona, they have tried to save the old big trees with these cabins nestled in among old trees and new trees and other plants added. Nature is central here which I appreciate.

Selvamar Grounds

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My Room

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Restaurant & Pool

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All we need, really, is a change from a near frigid to a tropical attitude of mind.       ~Marjory Stoneman Douglas

 

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

¡Pura Vida!

OTHER WILDLIFE – Punta Leona

I did not get as many photos as in some places, but “other wildlife” was not my goal. There were lots of squirrels and iguanas which I mainly ignored. And of course the birds and butterflies were in separate posts! Click an image to enlarge or start a manual slideshow:

 

“A forest’s beauty lies with its inhabitants.” 
― Anthony T. Hincks

 

See my Other Wildlife Galleries for many more Costa Rica animals

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!

¡Pura Vida!

BUTTERFLIES – Punta Leona

Butterflies always fascinate and dazzle me with their colors and rapid movements. Here’s a sample of what I saw in the Butterfly Garden at Hotel Punta Leona.

 

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.                                  -Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

See my Costa Rica Butterfly Gallery with 80+ species

See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery

And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!