Soon after I arrived at about 2:30, the rain started and hasn’t stopped. I shot photos of leaves and many things in the rain from the porch of my cabin, but prefer this shot of my cabin vista just before the rain began and hoping for a sunrise from this same direction in the morning – depending on what the rain does! 😊 Instead of printing trail maps they ask guests to photograph this posted map (below) and use your cell phone when a map is needed. That’s becoming more common in many of the lodges here since literally everyone has a cellphone.
View from my cabin porch just before rain started. Macaw Lodge Trail Map
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
~Proverbs 4:23
Yes, this blog started as a “reporting” of my experiences of living “Retired in Costa Rica” and the first few years have lots of “how to” or sharing my experiences of the big transition to a legal resident of Costa Rica. Now that I’m a “Residente Permanente,” it is more of the experiences “flowing from my heart,” and the God I love, and his beautiful natural world that he created for us to enjoy and manage. I hope my current nature blogging motivates just a few people to help save the natural world all around this globe, to love it and to be inspired by it while much of the world’s humans are systematically destroying forests and all the nature within! Nature is the theme of my blog now! But I will not change the name because that is still who I am, a retiree in Costa Rica! 🙂
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
~Albert Einstein
I remember as a child in El Dorado, Arkansas (14 miles from the Louisiana state line) walking the three blocks or so to a small city park with a little pond and being amazed at all the life and activity seen in just the shallow edges of the water and wanting to look at drops of that water through a microscope for the protozoa and other life a book had told me about.
WARNING: This is a longer than usual blog post but still with nature photos! 🙂
Here’s what I see when I walk out my gate walking to town in the first shot, looking NNW, and the second shot is looking NNE from the driveway behind my house just before the rain started. 🙂
View from my driveway exit as I was walking to town.Looking up one hill behind my house over George’s roof.
The Hills of Atenas the other day (October 2). I tried to do a panorama that didn’t “catch” or all match, so this is just one section that depicts the clouds or fog in the hills surrounding Atenas many early mornings, as seen from my terrace. There seems to be something “magical” or “mysterious” happening when the morning air is like this. 🙂
Cloudy Morning in the Hills of Atenas, Costa Rica.
¡Pura Vida!
Report on Galería ARTenas Opening
Gallería ARTenas Opening
We had a great opening to our little art gallery yesterday with hundreds of people coming to see (and some buy) hundreds of pieces of art. I think it was a big success and that many people in Atenas will become regular visitors and customers. We have a VIP Opening November 5 (government officials, etc.) and the JIT or “Just in Time for Christmas” arts and crafts fair the second week of December, so lots of things planned to motivate return visits. I plan to work with the gallery until sometime in January and then I am going to phase out this old man who is finding it a little too much now at age 83, but after that I may have an item or two in the gallery on consignment but will go back to photography just for fun and sharing it on the blog. So keep reading this blog for my usual flow of nature photography. 🙂 ~Charlie
I leave this morning for a mid-day, 30 minute flight back to the Central Valley and will miss the beautiful sunrises of the east coast. Here’s 5 shots made of this morning’s sunrise . . .
Sunrise, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Limón, Costa RicaSunrise, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Limón, Costa RicaSunrise, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Limón, Costa Rica
The first shot was earliest, about 4:45 am and increasingly later until 3rd at about 5 am. It changes rapidly over the fifteen minutes or so of rising. I also gradually zoomed in on the sky in each progressive shot.
See a free preview of my book: Sunrise Banana Azul with all 2-page spread photos on “lay flat” photo paper.
The sunrise was not spectacular my first morning, but this guy in a canoe made an interesting subject. 🙂
Sunrise Canoe, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo, LimónSunrise Canoe, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo, LimónSunrise Canoe, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo, LimónSunrise Canoe, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo, Limón
I had only one full day (along with two partial days) at El Silencio Lodge last month and on that full day it rained until after 2 pm, so it was nearly 3 pm before I headed out on what the lodge sometimes calls “Mystery Trail” for my 2 km hike mostly uphill to the three beautiful waterfalls that I shared photos of yesterday, then 2 km back to cabin before dinner.
But as is often the case, the journey is as beautiful or life-changing as the destination! And this was no exception! Every hiking trail is a “Mystical Footpath” to me and when I have more time than I did that day, I find exciting insects and lizards along every trail and in some places birds, monkeys, sloths and other wildlife! But this report is more on the trail and many streams along the way found in a photo gallery below this one pix. In the gallery you can click an image to see it larger and full-width or by clicking the first image you can go through all 12 as a manual slide show that you click through my story in pictures! Enjoy views from my Cloud Forest Hike of last month . . .
The three falls on the lodge property rival some of the big commercial falls in and around the little town of Bajos del Toro where there are 31 waterfalls you can visit! But these lodge falls are assuming that you are willing to walk 2km, mostly uphill to get to them and then they are fairly close together once you get to the first, which is Melody Falls. Then hiking back to your cabin is another 2 km, though mostly downhill and a lot easier and faster! 🙂 I was hiking solo, thus I did not wade into the stream for a better view of Melody Falls. Unfortunately I have history of slipping and falling on wet rocks! 🙂 So all of these photos were made from the dry trail or flat land by the three falls. Tomorrow I will share a few pix of the streams and other views along the trail to and from the falls which I think is almost as beautiful or interesting. But here’s one pix of each waterfall with it’s sign to identify it. And it works better if you go to the website to see them, so after the first one in emailed version, a link to the other photos in the blog post online . . .
