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Here’s the photos of Monday’s Sunset with no rain! 🙂
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.
~Amy Grant
¡Pura Vida!
Mine was so surrounded by forest on top of a hill that I could not get a distance shot of it, thus the featured photo is of another cabin, #9, not quite as big as mine (#12) since mine had a kitchen which I did not need but used like an office for my computer & camera stuff. I guess the kitchen is good for families.
I sat on the porch every day with my camera but did not photograph many birds there, just a dove, kiskadee, clay-colored thrush and one little lizard with a dewlap. But a nice peaceful place!
The electricity is from solar-powered batteries (a bunch of batteries!). The “hot” water was a separate device with a long pipe running back and forth on a board out in the sun. Since it is rainy season and limited sun I barely had warmish water after letting it run for three minutes. Showering first thing in the morning means a cold shower. Ahhh nature! 🙂
These “eco” lodges all encourage you to reuse your towel, hanging it on the towel rack for multiple uses all for ecology (but even more to save on their laundry costs!). The problem is that in a coastal rainforest like the one I was in, It is very hot 24-7 with humidity in the 90 percentiles, thus hanging towels never get dry (unless in direct sunlight). A wet towel will not dry you! I was not very ecological! 🙂
Click an image to enlarge it.
Yes, you have to walk up a trail to your cabin, uphill! But they have strong young men on staff to carry your luggage up! A part of the remoteness!
There are elements of intrinsic beauty in the simplification of a house built on the log cabin idea.
~Gustav Stickley
I’m starting a “Trip Gallery” on my visit to Macaw Lodge, but it may be a week before finished. It is titled: 2019-06–18-24–Macaw Lodge
¡Pura Vida!
I’m showing birds photographed at the hotel the first day and a half since tomorrow I do Carara National Park Birds and want to separate them. There will be more from hotel, like water birds at beach which I’ve not done yet. But this gives you an idea of some of the birds you can see here. Click image to enlarge or start a manual slideshow:
See my Punta Leona Trip Gallery
And visit the Hotel Punta Leona Website for more about this nature place!
¡Pura Vida!
When the lodge in Tortuguero tells me their van they will pick me up at any hotel in San Jose at around 5am and I live at an hour+ away, getting up at 3am to get there is not appealing, thus when I go to Tortuguero (my 3rd time now) I usually use my Hilton Honor points from an American Express Card to spend the night at Hampton Inn Airport. Well, Hampton Inn was full this time for the night I needed and thus the next closest Hilton Hotel was DoubleTree Cariari, at the Cariari Country Club, also called an airport hotel (5 miles). But it used to be an independent, locally owned unique Costa Rican Hotel Cariari. And I’m glad I couldn’t get in the “cookie cutter” Hampton Inn which is an identical building/room as all Hampton Inns in the U.S. Nothing unique or Costa Rican about it except the coffee and staff! 🙂 And the Cariari is the favorite hotel of my new friends from Durango, Colorado.
My favorite transportation from Atenas, Walter’s Taxis & Tours, brought me here midday and I’m enjoying the exploration of a new hotel to me. Here are a few my cell phone photos made here:
Tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM I leave for Tortuguero National Park on the North Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica.
¡Pura Vida!
Last night I went on the lodge’s “Night Hike” with about 8 other guests. It was similar to most other lodge night hikes and I have learned that my big camera is too much trouble on a night hike, so depend on my cell phone for photos. In addition to these frogs I got some insects and tried to photograph a coral snake we saw but failed at that. One of these is a new species of frog for me, the Red Webbed Tree Frog which has red-colored webs between his fingers and toes. Look close and you can see them. Click image to enlarge.
¡Pura Vida!
You may also enjoy my Other Wildlife Gallery
and my 2019 Maquenque Lodge Trip Gallery
See also the lodge website: Maquenque Ecolodge
It is a long drive (4+ hours) to Boca Tapada and beyond for the lodge plus we had to stop for a car repair and then lunch, but here by about two where I crossed the river by ferry to a truly isolated rainforest lodge you cannot get to by car. At check-in were two types of toucans and many other birds to greet me and I was taken to my most unusual room, a steel structured platform (secure) 20 meters above the ground built around giant virgin almond trees, thus my cabin name (español) Almendro. Three flights of stairs and a lot of steps! And so amazing! I am literally among the birds and other tree life! Writing this at dinner as the only place with Wifi. And in the jungle is luxury cream of squash soup, tilapia with risotto and pineapple flambe for dessert.
¡Pura Vida!
See also MY TRIP GALLERY: 2019 Maquenque Lodge Visit
See also the lodge website: Maquenque Ecolodge
A different hotel/lodge every month except April when a gang from Nashville come to volunteer in the children’s home here in Atenas. 4 lodges are repeats but such great places they will be totally new experiences! I start this month near the Nicaragua border sleeping 5 nights in a treehouse and from there it is everything from Whale Watching to Tapirs and of course lots of birds! There will be new wildlife this year and also its the year I expect to top 300 bird species that I will have photographed in Costa Rica! What a life! 🙂
And you may wonder why I am planning so far ahead? Well, it was not far enough for some places I wanted to visit, especially for next Christmas when my first two choices were already booked. Costa Rica and its best lodges and hotels are very popular and stay booked more than a year in advance.
The links on the hotel/lodge name is to that hotel’s website, if you are interested. And the map gives the approximate location of each visit this year using the month number for when I visit that spot and listing indicates lodge or national park visited that month.
*The 4 starred hotels are repeats for me, meaning I really like them! 🙂 And this is what it is like to be Retired in Costa Rica, the name of my blog! Pura vida!
For those who know Costa Rica the map helps understand where I’m traveling this year, my first to not go to Osa Peninsula, as I explore new places.
One favorite photo from each month of 2018 – And I had trouble picking just one! Thus the header photo above is an extra one from October and the only one here from Esquinas Rainforest Lodge, Piedras Blancas National Park, my #1 lodge this year.
Wow! This was too hard to do! My very best photos were probably all in 3 or 4 months, so I will try something different next year, like maybe my top 5 or so favorite photos. I think I will also try to rank the hotels/lodges/parks I visited this year.
I rank for all aspects of the lodge for a birder and/or nature lover, not necessarily in this order: number of birds and other wildlife seen, quality of guides, quality of overall service, restfulness of room, quality meals, overall ecology consciousness and sometimes the extra services, depending on the place and situation. My 2018 Top 7 lodges and hotels in order of my preference or enjoyment:
¡Pura Vida!
The above photo is one of my sunsets at Manuel Antonio National Park in 2015, my first year here! I go back to celebrate 4 years living here! Photographing new birds and other animals, walking forest trails and one of the most beautiful beaches in Costa Rica, getting one or more relaxation massages, and eating gourmet food every day for a week as I create more Costa Rica Nature Photos! That is my kind of Christmas Celebration and I anticipate a fabulous week! Here’s one of the resort’s several videos:
Or browse the Si Como No Website — This is living! 🙂
Retired in Costa Rica 4 Years Christmas Celebration
Starts Tomorrow, 21 December 2018
¡Pura Vida!
Photo is of a Caribe sunrise, Hotel Banana Azul,
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.
¡Pura Vida!
My prayers go to the Bush Family in their loss . . .
. . . a truly great & humble man!
George H. W. Bush
Humility is not thinking less of yourself,
it’s thinking of yourself less.
~C. S. Lewis
REPORT ON MY BIOPSY: After removing the 10 stitches from my arm (where all that cancer was confirmed removed) and the two stitches from my face for the biopsy, Dr. Gamboa gave me the facial biopsy report:
In brief, it says I have another carcinoma cancer on my face which is a smaller and slower growing type than the one on my arm. No problem waiting until January to remove the rest of it (the biopsy took most of it). Because of the delicate and thinner skin location next to my eye, we will be doing a more complicated and more efficient (more expensive) “Mohs Surgery” with two doctors doing it with a pathologist standing by to make sure they get all of the cancer as he examines each layer as removed (continuous biopsy). It will not be in his office this time but in a clinic, hospital-like, operating room, but still out-patient. He is checking on availability of other doctor and the clinic for the week of 21 January – after my Boca Tapada trip. Remember — the doctors work around my trips! 🙂 Important! That is where I sleep in a tree house 5 nights!
Dr. Gamboa also “PRESCRIBED” wearing a wide-brim hat instead of the ball caps I’ve been wearing and of course sunscreen every day when out. I sure love sunny Costa Rica, just 673 miles north of the equator, but with the value of the sun also comes with some potential dangers for someone like me who loves the outdoors. I have already become more careful, even though the doc says these current growths and cancers were probably caused by sun I got as a child or teen, more sun now can make it worse, so I must be cautious.
¡Still Pura Vida! 🙂