Category: Nature

My profession is to always find God in nature.

– Henry David Thoreau

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Caring for Nature

Celebrate Your Life
Care for Nature

I recently noticed this sign nailed to a tree in Central Park Atenas below some air plants. Costa Ricans are known for celebrating and enjoying life! And the country is a haven for nature unlike most others. Maybe someone put this sign here to educate the youth who hang out in the park a lot, since many of them are more interested in things than nature. As a nature-lover I’m glad to see it anyway.

The government and tourism leadership are working to make Costa Rica one of the “greenest” tourist countries in the world. Maybe now they will work harder on educating the local people concerning littering and misuse of things like the greywater I wrote about earlier. There is not much they can do about volcanic ash, but at least it is fairly rare with some volcanoes erupting only every 400 years. All of these little environmental concerns are important because together with the daily destruction of forests by man’s hunger for wood, land, and “progress,” we are systematically destroying the world that God made for us. The “care for nature” is still minimal in our world, even in Costa Rica. May we all celebrate life by caring for nature!

Now this good news as it was reported in “Costa Rica Insider” one of the newsletters I get:

100% renewable energy

More exciting news recently out of Costa Rica. The country’s electric utility company, ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) announced that during the first 75 days of 2015, the country had been running completely on renewable energy resources—with no burning of fossil fuels needed to generate electricity. The primary source is hydroelectric (Lake Arenal was actually created to power a hydroelectric plant), followed by geothermal (all that volcanic activity underground comes in handy), wind, and a good bit of solar, too.
Costa Rica has set an ambitious goal of being completely carbon neutral for its power generation by 2021. And it already generates more than 90% of its power on average through renewable sources.
Ticos and expats are psyched. And the achievement has also attracted attention from environmental watchers and media organizations from around the world.

“We cannot think too highly of nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832)
 

 

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” 

 

― Chris Maser, Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest

 

 

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Cashew Fruit

Cashew Fruit is ripening on trees around Atenas now.
Photographed from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica

This shot was made from about 50 meters away on a tree in a neighbor’s yard, shot from my balcony! The fruit reminds you of a red or yellow (come in both colors) bell pepper except for the seed or nut that hangs below it. Only one nut per fruit. No wonder cashews are somewhat expensive. Read about them in this Wikipedia article. New uses for the fruit itself are being developed, including one by Pepsi Cola. It is not a major export from Costa Rica. They grow in most tropical climes and we even had them in The Gambia. Most of what you get in the states probably come from India, Indonesia or Nigeria, where they are big exports. We stick with exporting bananas, pineapples, and coffee here! 
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Quiet Evening

I walked down to the river to see if I could find a bird to photograph and couldn’t, so a little shot of the stream running along the southern border of our property.

Rio Cajon just above the waterfall, 5:00 PM
Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica

I did capture this Red-billed Pigeon in flight yesterday, though not good focus
Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica
And tonight’s sunset clouds make a giant in the sky!
Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica

We are now harvesting the first mangos from our property trees – hope they will be good!

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Alajuela & La Garita

Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Kevin’s kind of museum! And a country without an army finds
all forts to be historical! This is across from the central plaza.
Alajuela Plaza Cathedral

Church of the Agony, Alajuela

We stop in La Garita at a plant nursery called a Vivero in Costa Rica
Kevin enjoyed shooting flowers there

We also tried to find a sugar cane mill we had passed earlier in the week, but failed to get on the right country road. So missed that photo op!

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Manuel Antonio National Park

Baby Green Parrot Snake in the Pacific coastal rainforest of
Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica
Shot with cell phone through a spotting scope
Three-toed Sloth
Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica
Shot with cell phone through a spotting scope
Glass Frog
Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica
Shot with cell phone through a spotting scope
Rare and elusive Squirrel Monkey
Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica
Shot with my Canon Rebel, 75-300 mm lens
A People-Watching White-faced Capuchin Monkey
Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica
Shot with my Canon Rebel, 75-300 mm lens
Sunset from El Avion Restaurant
Manual Antonio, Costa Rica
Cell Phone photo

We spent the morning on a guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park with a guide who had a spotting scope making some of these photos possible. The web connection is still slow, but I was more patient today uploading these 5 photos, though it took about an hour. Only a couple of birds today, but a lot of birds yesterday which I will show some of after back home in Atenas with a faster internet. We are tried a different approach to the sunset tonight by eating in a restaurant overlooking the ocean. Not as good as last night, but we accomplished dinner at the same time!

Quepos and Manuel Antonio towns are like Gatlinburg, horrible tourist traps next to a wonderful National Park like Gatlinburg with the Smoky Mountain National Park. Our older, simple hotel is nice and right on the beach unlike most. They have no restaurant, but there is one next door serving all three meals. We had lunch in a nice restaurant near the park today and tonight’s in an old airplane, El Avion, which overlooks the beach and ocean. Different!

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The Beach!

Sunset at Manuel Antonio Beach, Costa Rica

We have very slow internet connection in our motel on the beach, so only one photo which took 20 minutes to upload. The croc, birds, horse and other sunset photos will have to wait until later! We drove to Tarcoles River this morning for our croc and bird safari cruise, then on to Manuel Antonio National Park and beach where we have a hotel on the beach. This photo was made from behind our hotel. Tomorrow we take a guided hike into the rainforest and then chill out the rest of the day.

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Volcanoes and Waterfalls!

Templo Falls one of five falls at La Paz
Jaguar at La Paz, my favorite photo after the waterfall above.
Though my arm was scratched by an Ocelot when I tried to photograph
through bars of his cage. (That’s another story for later maybe!)

Blue Morpho Butterfly at La Paz
Poas Lake Caldron

Active Portion of Poas Volcano that smelled like sulphur
Tree Fern in tropical cloud forest of Poas Volcano
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Atenas Coffee Farm Tour

Gabriel (our Juan Valdez) teaches us about the natural way to grow coffee at
El Toledo Coffee Farm, Atenas, Costa Rica
Beans go through roasting machine to become
either light, medium, or dark roasted.
We tasted each and chose our favorite before knowing which roast.
The coffee farm pet Olive-throated Parakeets got my attention of course!
Then a traditional Tico Lunch of beans, rice, veggies, salad, plantains, fish
In Sarchi, Kevin got a taste of the rainforest after photographing
some of the colorful oxcarts made here along with furniture, etc.
A typical Costa Rican Oxcart made in Sarchi
Sarchi Church
Tico family in front of Grecia Church
Made of metal in Belgium in 1800’s
and reassembled in Grecia!

We got a little further away from Atenas today and will go even further tomorrow as we head for Poas Volcano and La Paz Waterfalls.

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A Day in Atenas Costa Rica

Waking up to Yellow Bells blooming out my bedroom window
Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica
Yes, I really could see this while lying in my bed this morning!
Same tree where I made some of those earlier bird photos.

Kevin and I eat breakfast on top of a mountain and photograph the vista at
La Casita del Cafe, Atenas, Costa Rica
Pacific Ocean is on the far horizon
Monumento del Boyero – National Monument to Oxcart Drivers
Atenas, Costa Rica
(Yeah, it was cloudy, but not a drop of rain yet!)
“Adios Snowbirds” dinner party before Canadians and Europeans return north
Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica 

Tomorrow we tour of Atenas’ El Toledo Coffee Farm and eat lunch in a family farm home there.

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Berdelle & Michael Visit

Michael King & Berdelle Campbell at Breakfast this morning
Vista Atenas B&B, Atenas Costa Rica

A flight cancellation and great delay got them into Costa Rica after dark and cancelled our original plans of lunch on their arrival day. So Michael King (Monell’s Restaurant) and Burdelle Campbell (My former Germantown neighbor) came back from their stay in Uvita (With Craig & Marcia Jervis of Mad Platter Restaurant) a day before their flights to stop and visit with me. And they got to see their only Costa Rica monkey right here on the Hacienda La Jacaranda property, our new Mantled Howler Monkeys. We had lunch at El Balcon del Cafe and I showed Berdelle around Atenas & my apartment while Michael worked. We then had dinner at La Trocha del Boyero. Because I could not give two of them much room or privacy in my apartment, I arranged rooms for them at Vista Atenas B&B.

They stayed at Vista Atenas B&B with this nice view of Atenas Valley
Berdelle Campbell in Central Park Atenas
A bouquet of flowers Berdelle brought me
from Craig & Marsha’s yard in Uvita,
just a few typical Costa Rica flowers
sitting on my breakfast bar!  🙂
The Photo Gallery of their visit