Mountains – Mist, fog, cloud – Shrouding
Haiku Clouds
Bewitching Birds
Merriam-Webster defines “bewitching” as “powerfully or seductively attractive or charming” which well-describes the effect of over 900 species of birds in Costa Rica on me, along with my love of alliterations! 🙂
I usually photograph more birds than this at Xandari, but with rain and fog blanketing that mountain most of the time this past weekend, I got usable photos of only 9 species, but as indicated yesterday, I made up the difference with butterflies and flowers! 🙂 I’m never without something to photograph at Xandari! 🙂
No new species this time, but as always, I love trying to get a different view, perspective, or activity of a bird to make my bird galleries more interesting. CLICK image to enlarge.
Melodious Blackbird 
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird 
Keel-billed Toucan 
Rufous-naped Wren 
Turkey Vulture 
Lesson’s Motmot 
Great Kiskadee Keel-billed Toucan 
White-eared Ground-Sparrow 
Gray-headed Chachalaca
Meet some of the Xandari family . . .
¡Pura Vida!
I return to my home in Atenas today but will have more posts about this weekend trip to Xandari and a gallery of the best photos from the weekend posted by the end of the week. In the meantime you might be interested in some of my other Costa Rica Travel galleries at CR Trips. Some of my Tico friends tell me that I’ve seen more of their home country than they have. I love it all!
🙂
Morning Walk Vistas
Just the views are a reason to walk even if no birds or flowers! 🙂 The cow pasture is across from my house, included to show you how much higher the grass is in rainy season. All other views are from my street just up the hill from my house. And people have similar views all over Costa Rica! One of many reasons I retired in Costa Rica! Pura Vida! 🙂
And CLICK an image to enlarge it!
For more Costa Rica Vistas, see that gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
Evening Vistas
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk . . . mysteries.”
―
¡Pura Vida!
Green
Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.
~Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Featured Photo: Zoomed in on surrounding hills, Atenas.
“Rainy Season” = “Green Season”
My Galleries: Flora & Forest or Vistas
¡Pura Vida!
New Pot Plants
When they start looking “scraggy” I like to have a fresh start! And I recently did that with these two pots, one outside and one inside.
The inside one has had several little palms from the beginning that never lasted more than a year, if that long – evidently needing more sun. So I replaced the palm with a Monstera deliciosa, also known as the Swiss Cheese plant, which is in the philodendron family and can better handle the lack of sun, as already shown in one of the shady areas of my outside garden. A nice tropical change from the palms that kept dying! 🙂
I don’t remember the name of the green plant we removed from my outside frog pot, but it evidently needed more water than that little pot could hold and kept turning brown. So it has been replaced with a type of fan palm that is supposedly easy to grow. But with a smaller pot, I still need to be more frequent with the water! 🙂 And the green plant removed is now doing well in one of my outside gardens!
“A dried plant is nothing but a sign to plant a new one”
― Priyansh Shah
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
See also My Home Gardens Photo Gallery and for the inside if my house:
My Rent House in Roca Verde Photo Gallery.
Fog
The clouds yesterday were easier to photograph! This is what the late afternoon or early evening looked like – a wall of white 50 meters away – so that you cannot see the mountain or hill in 2 of the shots or the valley in the other shot. There is something mysterious and exciting about fog, though hard to capture in a photo.
“Foggy road is a blessing because it is full of surprises and life is such a road! We are incredibly lucky that we all have an unknowable future!”
―
¡Pura Vida!
Clouds
So, I’m photographing clouds and not even from an airplane! 🙂 The photo is from my terrace at breakfast like so many! And for more BIG SKY photos, see my gallery: VISTAS, BEACHES, SUNRISES, SUNSETS COSTA RICA
Since Costa Rica is open for local only tourism now (and I’m local!), I thought I would reschedule that April trip to San Gerardo de Dota for the next week or two. I’m ready to go photograph some new birds and without foreigners I’m less likely to encounter the virus! So I may not wait until the July trip, though so far I’m unable to contact the right person at the Savegre Lodge with their website and email down on Friday and the guy I got on the phone was obviously not a reservations employee and had trouble understanding my bad Spanish, so I will try again this week. Like much of the world, a lot of Costa Rica is simply shut down! I’ll just have to enjoy the clouds! 🙂 Maybe I’ll see a bird there!
“If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations.“
-Charles M. Schulz
¡Pura Vida!
Foggy Horizon
“The fog is a chest, a magical chest! What wonders are hidden in it, the only way to see them is to dive into the fog!”
―
Photo of foggy horizon from my house in Roca Verde, Atenas, Costa Rica, April 2020.
¡Pura Vida!
“It should be difficult to get lost forever.”
Those were the last words emailed to the parents of Cody Roman Dial as he entered the famous and notorious Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula of south-western Costa Rica on the Pacific coast near the Panama border, July 10, 2014.
I am currently about 85% through the Kindle version of this memoir of the loss of Roman Dial’s son Cody Roman Dial here in Costa Rica the same year I moved here, 2014. It all happened in one of the wildest jungles in Central America, the kind with dangers that attract young men like Cody! From snakes & jaguars to illegal gold miners.
The book is The Adventurer’s Son by Roman Dial, the young man’s father, and it starts slow as a childhood biography of Cody helping you to love the adventurous boy as if you were his parent too. Then later he adds as many details as he had of Cody’s solo adventure hike from Mexico City to South America through Central America as an invincible-feeling 27 year old with enormous experience in the wild since his young childhood, most with his parents or sometimes with just the father, who is a lifetime adventurer, explorer, scientists, college professor and part-time explorer for National Geographic. The young man sort of had a reason to feel invincible in the wild. On his trek he climbed the highest mountain in Mexico, used his Spanish language to relate to locals, did an impossible off-trail hike through the jungles of El Peten, Guatemala and boated through the dangerous La Mosquitia Swamp in Honduras before coming to Costa Rica. All of the above were already amazing feats!
Because Corcovado National Park is one of my favorite places in Costa Rica that I have visited 3 times now, I was naturally quite interested in the story and the book.
I will not try to summarize the book or write a full review right now (I’m still reading it), here I give links to public information on the book (the above title link is to the Amazon.com source of the book). Below are three reviews. Plus I have added the reports of the father’s search by our local online newspaper Tico Times and some other news media reports below that. Lastly I have added links to the photo galleries of my three visits to this wilderness national park that took Cody’s life.
BOOK REVIEWS: (1) The Washington Post, (2) Tico Times, (3) Goodreads, (4) My Review on Goodreads, 16 March, added after this post published
SEE ALSO: NPR Interview of Author: A Father Recounts His Search For The Son Who Vanished In Costa Rican Wilderness – There is a short written summary and a 37 minute audio at this link.
Images from News Articles
The True Story in Real Time by News Media
TICO TIMES CHRONOLOGICAL ARTICLES ON CODY ROMAN DIAL:
July 28, 2014 – Search continues in Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park for missing US hiker
July 29, 2014 – Red Cross officials suspect missing hiker may be inside gold mining tunnels
August 4, 2014 – Final search underway for US hiker missing in Corcovado National Park (That is “final” says the CR government agencies.) Not for the father!
August 6, 2014 – Costa Rican gov’t and Red Cross suspend search for US hiker believed missing in Corcovado Nat’l Park
September 17, 2014 – Father of missing hiker hopes to continue search in Panama
May 7, 2016 – Nat Geo mini-series investigates Cody Dial’s disappearance in Corcovado National Park
May 20, 2016 – Human remains in Corcovado could belong to missing US hiker Cody Dial
May 23, 2016 – Missing US hiker Cody Dial’s passport found with human remains in Corcovado National Park
May 27, 2016 – Missing US hiker Cody Dial’s parents submit DNA to investigators
OTHER CHRONOLOGICAL NEWS ARTICLES ON CODY ROMAN DIAL:
May 23, 2016 – outsideonline.com, What Happened to Cody Dial? A New Discovery Raises More Questions
December 20, 2016 – Alaska News, Missing Alaska adventurer was killed by falling tree in Costa Rica, his father says
December 21, 2016 – reddit.com, Mystery Solved!
There are many more stories online about the mysterious disappearance of Cody Roman Dial and and the ultimate conclusion that he was struck by a tree in a storm and killed in the wilderness of Corcovado National Park, hiking off trail which is against the park rules and hiking without an official guide which is also against the park rules. Sometimes rules are for your own good, but a real adventurer doesn’t always think so.
The book and the live news stories are heartbreaking for parents (I empathize because I’ve lost a child), but this story shows the infrequent yet possible dangers in the wilderness that any adventurer knows are possible. I would personally have thought a poisonous snake more likely there, but even the less likely falling tree is possible, especially in the many storms there.
I remember backpacking solo on Fiery Gizzard Trail in TN with fewer dangers but real dangers anyway. Then one day in 2012 on just a day hike there I stumbled and fell on a rocky mountainous trail and was serious hurt requiring stitches in my head. Maybe a life of adventure is always a gamble to some degree, but many real adventurers feel they must continue the gamble! But, like with so many things for me, I tend to be a moderate, wanting adventure but with more caution than many require, especially the young invencibles!
And yes! I will continue to go to Corcovado National Park (see photos of my 3 visits linked below), but always I go with a guide on an official trail, as tame as that may seem to you Cody’s out there! 🙂 I am basically a risk-adverse adventurer! And yes, that is compromising the very meaning of “adventure,” but I’m an old man who is still alive and still having fun! 🙂
My Comparatively Tame Corcovado Adventures
2018-March-13-17–Danta Corcovado — At Los Patos Entrance on above map.
2017 May 1-6 – Drake Bay, Corcovado, Aguila Lodge — At San Pedrillo Entrance on above map
2009 January Birding Tour of Costa Rica — At La Leona Entrance on above map
There are only two other entrances that I have not visited, Sirena & Rio Tigre, but may yet. No planned trips there this year but maybe I go again in 2021. 🙂
“Adventure is worthwhile.” -Aesop
¡Pura Vida!