Category: Charlie Doggett

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Forced Respite From Blogging

Well, it was just two nights away, one of my shortest overnight trips yet in Costa Rica, and I was planning on a blog post each night. But first it was Google Chrome, then MS Edge and finally Firefox browser that all refused to let me into my own website to post (and one other site) saying I was on an “unsafe connection (hotel Wifi) and that someone at my own website might steal by personal information including credit card numbers.” 🙂 Grrrrrrrrr.

So I just took a respite from the blog. No big deal. And here are the photos I was going to post that first night there (Wednesday) simply showing my room. The large rooms, or really spacious villas, plus the overall architecture is the highlight of Xandari Costa Rica for most guests, that and also the original art and statuary in every room and in the gardens. Then the first class restaurant and for nature lovers like me, a protected rainforest with 5 waterfalls and beautiful gardens around the buildings plus for other people, 3 pools and a Spa! It was a good respite and even though fewer birds this time (fewer all over Central Valley because of the strange weather this year), I photographed 5 or 6 birds plus more that 25 species (still counting) of butterflies with about 6 new or first-time seen species for me! Here’s one photo of one of the butterflies for the email version of the post, followed by a gallery of 6 shots from my room . . .

Orange-striped White by my terrace.
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Pura Vida Inspiration

I read three things today that helped me realize again how fortunate I am to be living in such an amazing little country as Costa Rica! AND how much I have slowed down, calmed down, and embraced nature since I’ve been living here, eight years this coming December! Here’s links to the three inspirational articles I read today . . .

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“How beautiful the leaves grow old.”

“How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.”

~John Burroughs
“How beautiful . . . “

I have already done one post on dead leaves, titled: Beauty in Death about the final days of a Heliconia leaf in my garden with one of my favorite photos. Then the above quote of John Burroughs and some cool dead leaves at Playa Cativo Lodge motivated me to move on with another dead leaf post! 🙂

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My Radiation Treatment Testimony

Siglo XXI Radioterapia, the private clinic that treated me post-cancer surgery asked if they could interview me on camera as a way of helping future patients understand a little more of what they will go through. So I did and it is now on YouTube with me speaking in English and of course they added Spanish Subtitles. I’m always embarrassed to see and hear myself on a video, but if it helps even one other patient face the treatment, then more power to them! 🙂

My Cancer Treatment Testimonial Video for Siglo XXI.

¡Pura Vida!

And that book in the feature photo can be previewed free at True Grit in my bookstore.

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Jungle waterfall

Jungle Waterfall, Playa Cativo Lodge, Piedras Blancas National Park, Costa Rica.

My birthday morning was sunny with lots of birds singing and the Howler Monkeys closer than they were the previous morning! 🙂 The monkeys serve as the roosters to wake you at 5 am when you’re in the rainforest. After a great breakfast I walked the half-kilometer all uphill to the waterfall closest to the lodge. It is left natural as it would be if no humans were around, thus vegetation hides part of the upper falls and a tree fell in the lower falls and they will let nature take its course, as the tree will eventually rot and be washed away, but now the only human “improvements” are the trail to get there and that could use some more improvement! 🙂 (I will include photos of the trail in my trip gallery later.)

Note that in the above photo you can partly see the upper falls while in the next two from the bottom, it is mostly hidden by vegetation.

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Goodnight from a Rainforest

Dark, damp, misting rain with no sunset as such but a trace of color as I eat my dinner at Playa Cativo overlooking the Gulf of Dulce on the Pacific coast of southern Costa Rica, while north of us Hurricane Bonnie is rushing across northern Costa Rica and Nicaragua and the handful of us here are thankful it didn’t veer south! 🙂

I saw and did a lot the first afternoon, but too tired to curate more photos now, so this rainforest report begins with a dark sky that will surely brighten as the week goes by. If not raining, I go on my birding hike at 5:30 in the morning and I got a head start with two pretty good photos today in the low light of a Great Curassow and a Scarlet-rumped Tanager.

And Of course I already like this place! 🙂 Later I’ll tell you about my beachside cabin and share photos from this nature-rich forest.

¡Pura Vida!

Playa Cativo Lodge Website

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This Lens

The host of My Photo Gallery is SmugMug.com and they regularly produce little short videos about photography or photographers and the little one they released this month shares in 3.5 minutes how four or fve different persons see their world through “This Lens” chronicling a growing family, promoting a cause, capturing nature like me and another the magic of outdoor sports. I thought it interesting enough to share on my blog:

My lens? I’ll just keep capturing the works of God through nature! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

The feature photo by Tom Oakley is of me many years ago on a nature photography trip in Tennessee with the Nashville Photography Club. You can read more about the history of my love of photography after retirement on my Photography Page.

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Beauty in Death

The Bronzed Face of Death

The leaf of a Heliconia Flower dies in my garden and I see . . . 

Trumpet
Pointing up
Graceful

Color
Burnished Bronze
Amply

Dying
Supportive
Green Leaf

Beauty
Forever 
In Death

Or the story in photos . . .

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Guava Skipper

My second time to see this colorful butterfly was almost two weeks ago (yeah, I’m writing posts way ahead again, but will do it live daily on my trip in July). It was after breakfast, walking in my garden, when I found him. The Guava Skipper, Phocides polybius (Wikipedia link) is found from South Texas through Mexico and all of Central America down to Argentina. My only other time to see one was at Xandari Resort Alajuela for my birthday in 2019. Those photos plus these here can be seen in my Guava Skipper Gallery.

The one at Xandari was bluer than this one which is darker or close to black. And it is interesting that most of my butterfly photos at home show them on a Porterweed flower even though I have many other flowers. An obvious preference for butterflies and hummingbirds! 🙂 And by the way, they are called “Guava” because they lay their eggs on a Guava Plant, which is somewhere between a shrub and a small tropical tree. 🙂

Guava Skipper, Atenas, Costa Rica

Now here’s six shots in a slideshow for a change . . .

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