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I just uploaded the last photo I’ve chosen to share from a very photogenic resort! I’m pleased with a lot of the photos and you can see them in the gallery at:
https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2019-July-28-31-Villa-Caletas-Jaco
Or it may be more fun 🙂 to click the image of the first page:
¡Pura Vida!
Slowing down a little – here’s my shots from the last full day at Villa Caletas and a very relaxed 4 days. The featured image is of a hotel worker walking up the street in front of my room towards the Zephyr Palace.
The prettiest things here along with the vistas . . .
See all my butterflies in my Costa Rica Butterflies Photo Gallery!
No gardens, just pots and plantings around buildings.
Such as there were today . . .
This is not the very best birding place even though you do see toucans and macaws. The concierge never worked out my two requested birding hikes because no others here wanted them and they don’t do for one person. No problem! I’ve already been to Carara NP 4 times and Rio Tarcoles about 8 times! Hanging out here was more relaxing and it was a good time on the mountaintop!
CLICK image to enlarge.
All shot from my room before dinner.
“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.”
– Leo Tolstoy
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
See all photos from this trip at 2019 Villa Caletas, Jaco Photo Gallery.
The little trip to the beach gave me some different birds than the many toucans & macaws around the hotel, plus I saw a new type of Euphonia today in a tree off my room terrace, just not a good photo, but a “lifer” for me! (First time to see that species.) Only 6 birds but interesting ones:
CLICK image to enlarge.
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
~Rabindranath Tagore
¡Pura Vida!
Well . . . my goal for today was to photograph a toucan and a macaw. Goal accomplished! Plus some other colorful creatures before, during an after breakfast, with several butterflies included and a most interesting blue-winged insect on my breakfast table! Remember, nearly all restaurants in Costa Rica are alfresco! Enjoy my photos from Villa Caletas today.
CLICK image to enlarge
Color is like the finishing touch on everything.”
~Marc Jacobs
See all my butterflies in my Costa Rica Butterflies Photo Gallery!
Or all photos from this trip at 2019 Villa Caletas, Jaco Photo Gallery
¡Pura Vida!
“Guarumo” is the Spanish name Ticos call a Cecropia Tree (English name) and about 4 years ago I asked my gardeners to plant one in my front yard because I had heard that they attract toucans for the easy perches and the food of the flowers. I would be patient, not really knowing how fast they grow!
In just 4 years it is the tallest tree in my yard, more than twice the height of my little house and my favorite “Bird Gallery” or place for birds to land so I can photograph them because it is such an open tree with a limited number of large leaves. See in the tree photos below what it looked like when we planted it and how big it has grown.
No telling how many birds I miss that land in the top of the tree! 🙂 But the lower limbs are what I watch while eating breakfast every morning and where I photographed from my terrace the birds in the birds photos below, including two kinds of toucans! I love nature’s gallery of birds that helps me grow my own photo gallery of birds! ¡Pura Vida!
CLICK photo to enlarge or start manual slideshow.
CLICK photo to enlarge or start manual slideshow.
“Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.”
― Munia Khan
¡Pura Vida!
This morning a quick walk through my garden gave me photos of these four butterflies plus I kept seeing a bright yellow one (probably one of the Sulphurs) who would never slow down enough for a photo. But here’s the four I got (CLICK to see larger):
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
~R. Buckminster Fuller
See all my butterflies in my Costa Rica Butterflies Photo Gallery!
¡Pura Vida!
Yeah, I have these Black Witch Moths visit my house almost every year and you can see at least 4 others in my Butterfly & Moth Gallery, found alphabetically as “Black Witch Moth.” And I obviously don’t believe the Latin Folklore that the appearance of one means death is coming to that house soon.
This one was on my bathroom wall at the ceiling last night and gone by this morning. To the naked eye it is very dark as this photo on my Canon SLR without a flash shows (only bathroom ceiling light on in the night). In February I shot one on my brown shower curtain with my cell phone and flash and if you go to that link you will see how much more colorful they are with more light or in the gallery there is also one with the Canon using the flash. Big difference! As light always brings!
As one visitor to my house said “I always see something scurrying away when I turn on the light during the night.” Well, living with strange wildlife is not for everyone, but I find it quite interesting and kind of fun when one is named a “Witch!” 🙂 Why, it even calls for a Halloween Cartoon I think:
🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Because it was a special week, I’m doing a second book on Xandari where I celebrated my birthday last week. It was such a colorful week, I titled it “Brilliant!” Follow the link to a free online preview of the book showing 82 of my photos. Or click this smaller image of the book cover below:
Also see the 2019 Trip Gallery for this week.
Or the older 2018 Xandari Trip Gallery
And my photo book for that year’s visit titled Xandari Enchanted by Nature
A truly amazing place!
¡Pura Vida!
Nature is what we see – the hill, the afternoon, squirrel, eclipse, the bumblebee. Nay, nature is heaven. Nature is what we hear…
~Emily Dickinson
Above is this morning’s photo of a Variegated Squirrel at Xandari Nature Resort (link to their website) or see my photos of last year’s visit here.
¡Pura Vida!
I completed my “Trip Gallery” of the 6 nights at Macaw Lodge, Carara National Park, Costa Rica. It is another fabulous nature retreat in Costa Rica and I hope you check out some of the photos I have posted. You can click the print screen image below or this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2019-06-18-24-Macaw-Lodge
“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels.”
— Ansel Adams
¡Pura Vida!