As the first and only customer in restaurant for a 7 AM Breakfast I was greeted not only by the friendly waiters but by a couple of Scarlet Macaws in the nearby trees. The major group of other guests here is a group of vacationing Mexicans and the waiters said that they like to party late and breakfast late! 🙂
But anyway, I got a few shots of the Macaws before they flew off and all the other customers missed them! 🙂 They are hard to photograph – always on the move and when they land it is behind limbs and leaves! Pura vida! 🙂
Scarlet Macaws
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Scarlet Macaw
Scarlet Macaw
Scarlet Macaw
I head back to Atenas this morning. My little 4-day excursion in search of sunsets was a good one! It was relaxing, with some good photos, even one lifer bird and my best photo yet of a Gray Hawk.
Plus now I am knowledgeable of another beach-view hotel at Jaco. It is too expensive for me normally and not that great for birds, but some of the best food I’ve had and the sunsets are great! Thus I recommend Villa Caletas for a relaxing vacation if money is not an option.
And I have started working on my “Trip Gallery” 2019 July Villa Caletas which will soon have my collection of photos from here, maybe by tonight. 🙂
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.
Butterflies
The prettiest things here along with the vistas . . .
No gardens, just pots and plantings around buildings.
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Birds
Such as there were today . . .
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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!
Wednesday Sunset
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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.”
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:
Tuesday Birds
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Yellow-throated Toucan
Melodious Blackbird
Gray Hawk
Thick-billed Euphonia
Bare-throated Tiger-Heron
Great-tailed Grackle
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
This morning I used the shuttle run to the mostly private Caletas Beach (technically all beaches are public) down the paved drive onto a gravel road along which I got my hawk photo (in a separate post) and onto their private hotel property adjacent to the beach which is a fabulous private park with rancho, rest rooms, restaurant, picnic tables and even a bonfire already built and ready to light for the next group wanting such. My plan was to walk their hiking trail down the mountain and drive back, but rain has heavily damaged the trail they say and thus it is closed. I decided not to walk the road but could have.
I explored with my camera where I got more butterflies than birds but I’m doing a bird post next anyway. It is mostly a rocky beach with a seawall along part of it and even a boat ramp. I got some cool seashells, the photos below and a wonderful fresh fruit bedida (smoothie) in the restaurant before the driver returned with a European couple on his hourly run to the beach from our mountaintop resort and I returned with him after one hour. Been there done that now! 🙂
Caletas Beach
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All beaches are pretty to me!
A little sand beach
Bonfire is ready!
Pelican Art
Toucan Art
Multiple areas so people can spread out.
My driver and restaurant operator.
Cactus on a beach still seems strange to me!
Paradise must have a sailboat & speedboat!
The rock beach
Lots of chaise lounges & umbrellas
“Rancho” or meeting or picnic pavilion
Hotel Restaurant
Typical beach warning.
Macaw Art
A Seawall
If this beach looks empty that is because it nearly was – one Tico family picnicking on this beach and as I left that European couple came on the beach from the hotel to replace me. High season (lots of people) is December through April. May to October is rainy season and “low season” for tourists. There’s maybe only a dozen or so of us in the hotel now. I like that!
Also I don’t always go to such touristy places as a guy who prefers the forest and jungle lodges, but I had been urged to see the sunsets here and I am! 🙂
One of the big attractions at this hotel is almost another hotel: an events facilities for weddings, big parties, family reunions, business meetings, retreats, whatever with its own set of luxury rooms and villas, infinity pool, large meeting spaces, etc. It is called “Zephyr Palace,” named after the Greek God Zephyr . . .
Zephyrwas the Greek god of the west wind, which was considered the gentlest wind, especially if compared to the colder north wind, Boreas. The warm west wind brought the spring season. Even today the name of the god means a warm and light breeze. Zephyr was the father of two immortal horses, Xanthus and Balius.
Costa Rica seems to like Greece and Greek culture. I live in Atenas which is actually the Spanish name for Athens. Up the road north of us is another larger town named Grecia, Spanish for Greece.
My villa here is at the beginning of the road to Zephyr Palace that is lined with greek columns. In fact all of the buildings here have greek columns including my room! Monday morning late, when the maid came in my room, I walked up the road to Zephyr Palace. Here are some photos I made with my cell phone.
Here’s the photos of Monday’s Sunset with no rain! 🙂
Sunset at Villa Caletas July 29
Get outside. Watch the sunrise. Watch the sunset. How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel big or tiny? Because there’s something good about feeling both.
It was raining the whole evening – all of these photos made in a light rain and that may partly account for the changing colors. Sunset at Villa Caletas.
If you are in a beautiful place where you can enjoy sunrise and sunset, then you are living like a lord.
Villa Caletas is an older hotel and old-style upscale, old-style architecture, and old-style service with big staff, lots of young people anxious to wait on you. So far I like it even though the trail down the mountain is closed because of rainy season damage. It was raining when I got here and has rained most of the time, which I thought meant no sunset, but boy was I surprised! It’s late & I’m tired, so I will post the sunset photos tomorrow. Here’s my first impressions of the hotel in photos without photos of the toucans and macaws flying around when I didn’t have my big camera out. All of these are cell phone photos:
Most of my trips within Costa Rica are in search of more birds! And most give me at least one new species. But I also love photographing other nature, vistas, waterfalls, and of course Sunrises & Sunsets!
Multiple expat friends here have told me that the best sunset vistas and photos are from the restaurant & theater at a hotel on a hill near Jaco, just an hour away, Hotel Villa Caletas. It is upscale or expensive, so only 4 nights which is not as long as I prefer to stay to really see a place, but that will still be 4 sunset opportunities, Sunday-Wednesday nights, weather cooperating. I’ve had more than one sunset rained out or covered by clouds, but that’s part of the adventure!
Villa Caletas is different from the nature lodges I usually visit, but still immersed in nature with hotel birding trails and a jungle trail down the mountain to their beach with shuttle rides back up the hill. It is close to Punta Leona which had very good birding and also close to the Carara National Park (good birding) which I may or may not visit again – been there 4 time now! Just going to take it day by day after I get there. A serendipity trip!
I think I already have some pretty nice sunset photos in my gallery called VISTAS, BEACHES, SUNRISES, SUNSETS CR . The featured image above is one of mine of a sunrise on the Caribbean side which I like to use because so many people here think everything is better on the Pacific side – well, maybe just more expensive! 🙂 And most can’t see a difference in sunrise or sunset.
What I get at Villa Caletas will go in the Pacific Sub Gallery of the above linked sunset gallery and then we can compare to see if they really have the best sunsets on the Pacific coast! 🙂 My favorite on the Pacific so far is the one I took from a Sansa Airplane (on return from Danta Corcovado). And they weren’t too bad from a hillside hotel in Manuel Antonio last Christmas! Yep! I love sunsets!
While the Atlantic or Caribbean side is mostly for sunrises, I have been pretty lucky over there too! (Where I go again the end of this August.) You just have to get up earlier to see sunrises! Yawn! 🙂
And to be fair to Villa Caletas, here is one of their website photos of their sunset which is very nice! Hope mine will be as good or better! 🙂
Sunset photo from Villa Caletas online. — Not my photo.
¡Pura Vida!
When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
“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!
Birds in Tree
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Clay-colored Thrush
Yellow-bellied Elaenia
Palm Tanager
Fiery-billed Aracari
Melodious Blackbird
Fiery-billed Aracari
White-winged Dove
Yellow Warbler
Keel-billed Toucan
Gartered Trogon
Gray-headed Caracara
Fiery-billed Aracari
Gray-headed Caracara
Great Kiskadee
Rufous-naped Wren
Rufous-naped Wren
Squirrel Cuckoo
Montezuma Oropendola
The Tree
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The Tallest Tree at End of House
A Skinny Little Tree When Planted
Open Limbs, Few Leaves
Easy to See & Photograph Birds
Gardener Trims Limbs from House
Top When First Planted
“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.”
