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| Looking down on Central Atenas & the Central Church Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| But just the hills on the backside of my neighborhood are a “Feast for My Eyes!” Early morning fog reminds me of the presence of the Holy Spirit. What a place to walk! Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| I can’t say for sure that the vet lives in the same house he cares for animals, but it is a house! And across the street is David & Corinna’s house where they both live & have language classes as their place of business. In their case, one rent is better than two rents! 🙂 |
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| Bribri Yorkin Reserve, Caribe, Costa Rica |
The full quote:
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| From behind the big rock at Roca Verde entrance you see the red-orange flowers of our African Tulip Tree. Atenas, Costa Rica |
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| African Tulip Tree Zooming in on another tropical tree that blooms for about one month. Atenas, Costa Rica |
I walk about half a mile up a steep hill to Chef Dan’s house 2 or 3 times a week for one of his gourmet meals for dinner. Monday I had Shrimp Alfredo with side salad and Italian bread. Tonight I walked up the hill for Curry Chicken Salad Wrap with side salad and mango chutney. I eat pretty well most of the time to be living in the rainforests of Central America! 🙂
For other blooming trees in Atenas, see my Walking Atenas photo gallery
Or for the whole country, see my larger Flora & Forest photo gallery
And most of you know that means I have trips planned for the rest of the year with other serendipities like holidays and local experiences being “extra” joys!
But for those who particularly like my trips or the birds I photograph on them, here’s my coast to coast plans for the next 4 months, leaving specific dates off for security reasons:
SEPTEMBER is my trek back to the Caribe with 4 nights in a very popular hotel I could not get in on another trip, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. It is one of the very few actually on the beach, like walk out of your cabin right onto the beach. (Most are across the highway.) I do not care for swimming in the ocean for many reasons, nor sunbathing, but absolutely love walking on the beach which I will do a lot of this trip. It is also “Adult Only,” simply meaning no children. I love kids, but they tend to dominate a resort at every point and can be quite disruptive from sleeping & meals to activities & pool. So my first time to try one of these! I’ll let you know what I think.
Plus I plan on two new reserves for birding and otherwise hiking in nature with local guides; one is a national park and one a private reserve which they claim is the best. And of course the beautiful forested grounds of the hotel and even the beach will have birds!
And I will experience a little caribbean culture & food in Puerto Viejo. See
this info page and welcome video About Puerto Viejo. There’s also links there to why visit the Caribe, difference in caribbean and pacific coasts, etc. I may come home singing reggae! 🙂 But mainly hope to relax and get more bird photos! Here’s more on Caribbean Local Activities beyond the music and food or my favorite, Caribbean Jungle, Nature & Wildlife. And the Hotel Banana Azul Photo Gallery.
It will be both similar and different from my safari tent hotel in Manzanillo last year. See that Manzanillo Trip Photo Gallery for comparison. I still don’t have a strong preference for caribbean or pacific coast yet, though I tend to favor the “underdog” or least popular which would be the Caribe. It is quieter, cheaper, more natural, smaller & locally owned hotels, and less crowded. If you like big Marriotts or Hiltons, go to the Pacific side and spend more money! I’m doing that in December but not in a big chain hotel.
NOVEMBER is in the cloud forests not far from Atenas, just outside San Ramon where I stay in my second Greentique Hotel, associated with the Aquila de Osa Hotel I was in at Drake Bay. (One of my favorite!) But this one is only an hour or so away by bus through Palmares to San Ramon where the hotel picks me up at the bus station. It is called Villa Blanca Cloud Forest Hotel & Nature Reserve.
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| Typical birding hike. |
Of course I already have birding treks scheduled with local guides and may get to see their cloud forest research center. Plus they have trails on their own property I can visit on my own and all three hotels have jacuzzis which I hope to use and who knows? Maybe even a relaxing back massage! I view retirement as an almost continuous vacation! 🙂 It’s great! And this one’s close to home!
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| Another tropical paradise where you have both a pool and the beach, plus forest for birds! And hopefully great food! 🙂 |
CHRISTMAS WEEK is when I decided to try the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula and Guanacaste on the Pacific Coast. And my Google search showed Tambor Bay the best area of the southern peninsula for birding, according to a local birding club on the peninsula. So we will see! I have reservations at the Tambor Tropical Hotel right on the beach AND on a river with hiking trails following it inland for lots of do-it-yourself birding. Plus there are two reserves nearby that I hope to see with a guide. And this is another “Adults Only” hotel. Wow! New for me.
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| Puntarenas is almost due west of Atenas, slightly southwest. To drive or go on bus includes a long ferry ride, making a long trip. Thus I have elected to fly a small plane to the little airport at Tambor Bay. Hotel picks me up at airport. |
Not having family, I have found that Christmas is more enjoyable while on a trip and I always end up with new friends as well as new experiences! So I’m looking forward to this Christmas when I celebrate living in Costa Rica for three years! ¡Pura Vida!
Roberto was one of us 6 men in the hospital room this week for two nights and as the healthiest looking and the only one who was mobile, he became “a little Christ” among us, walking humbly and quietly from bed to bed to comfort each of us any way he could, listening patiently to the overly talkative man, emptying the urinal of the overweight man, cranking beds up or down, talking quietly with the wife of the dying man, and generally being the presence of God’s love in our little 6-bed hospital room. To watch a man imitate Christ in front of me for parts of 3 days was pure joy!
Then today as I returned to hospital simply to make a follow-up appointment with my cardiologist (no, you can’t do it everywhere by phone) I got to try being like Roberto or Christ. A special needs adult in front of me in line dropped a hand full of papers that scattered on the floor. I got down on my good leg’s knee and picked them up. As I handed them to him the radiant smile on his face was another moment of blessing among loving Costa Rica people.
Philippians 2:3-8
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
WEDNESDAY, 23 AUGUST
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| Hospital San Rafael de Alajuela Alajuela, Costa Rica |
My friend Jason Quesada goes with me on bus and taxi to Hospital San Rafael de Alajuela for a 1:00 pm appointment for what I thought was going to be paperwork to take with me to the bigger Hospital Mexico in San Jose on Friday though Jason thought I was going to be checked into Hospital Alajuela, which I knew couldn’t be two days before a test. I was wrong again. In short they were full and one day in advance is enough said Lorenzo in Admissions. (See my last post) So he promised me he would have a room the next day because the test was pre-scheduled.
THURSDAY, 24 AUGUST
Jason & I get back there a little before 3;00 pm and wait about 30 minutes to start the process. One of the first things they did before taking a group of us upstairs to our rooms was snap on the usual hospital bracelet with my hospital ID number & name. Note that most Latin Americans use 3 names like mine shone here but with slightly different meanings. Of course the “first name” or “given name” is the same. But what I call a middle name “Everett” would be a Tico’s father’s last name and the one most commonly used for shorter names. My Dr. Hernandez is using his father’s last name as his primary family name. Then the third or last name in a list like this is their mother’s maiden name, which is what some here may think about my last name of “Doggett.”
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| Jason snapped this of me eating soup in hallway. |
We had one delay because my hospital file (started earlier) was lost. 🙂 But they found it and up we went to the fourth floor which includes cardiology. Then we sit in a hallway while that nurses station gets me checked into my room 414 which was really my bed number in a room of 6 old men with heart problems, beds 413-418. We are sitting in a hallway with a TV playing a horrible Mexican Comedy Channel for maybe another 45 minutes. No TV in rooms, so you come out here to watch. They start serving the dinner trays and I get my first hospital dinner in Costa Rica while waiting in the hallway for my room preparation. It is very healthy and mostly tasteless bland! Vegetable/chicken noodle soup, beans & rice, mixed tropical vegetables you Tennesseans wouldn’t recognize, a cold beet and carrot salad, cup of fruit juice, and an apple for dessert. This was typical lunch & dinner with varieties and even a pear instead of an apple the next night. I would recommend those planning on a hospital visit to pack salt, pepper, herbal seasonings, hot sauce, catsup, or whatever you like to give more flavor. 🙂
My roommates were all nice and interesting gentlemen, all speaking Spanish of course. 4 of them were bedridden. One came there after a massive heart attack and the following night or at 1:15 am this morning he had another attack and nearly died while I watched, but was still alive and on machines when I left today, but his son told me he had been given only 30 days to live by one doctor. Another commentary on Costa Rica: almost every bed had a family member sitting in the one chair by each bed. Family First here! And the heart-attack guy is why my angiogram!
They kept working on me to past 8:30 pm with things like blood for tests, shunts for catheters, x-rays and the constant blood pressure checks, etc. It was a very noisy night as was the second night with one roommate talking (hollering) in his sleep, nurses in every hour with whatever services and of course turning on lights, and the hospital has all kinds of buzzers, bells, etc and a PA system for announcements and paging of person, and the very friendly and happy crew at the nurses station, right outside our door, laughing and carrying on all night. If planning on a hospital visit here, I suggest you bring ear plugs! 🙂
And we all wore something like hospital sweats or whatever you call the buttoned shirts and tied pants. The only hospital gown I got was for the surgery room test Friday.
FRIDAY, 25 AUGUST
This was the big day and the part I had the most uncertainty about, cutting into my leg at my crotch and running something up the artery. Ugh. By 5:00 am the nurse was getting me ready with two stents for drips as needed and shaving parts of me, etc. We left a little after 6 am with a crew of 4 in an ambulance for the normally 21 minute drive to Hospital Mexico, but in rush hour it was probably 30 to 45 minutes (didn’t time it). Most of my attendants were in their 20’s it seemed, the doc maybe 30, a nurse, orderly, and some kind of helper. The driver was very professional as I learned on the return trip.
The ambulance pulled up to a side door of Hospital Mexico and I was rolled into the second room
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| Hospital Mexico San Jose, Costa rica |
where of course I waited at least 30 minutes while the crew enjoyed themselves! The happiest people in the world just love to be together! Laughing, talking, beautiful digital music and occasionally giving me attention. Someone was having this procedure ahead of me and course another gurney rolled in right after me; a regular assembly line! I was surprised at how quick it was having been told from 30 minutes to two hours if a lot of blockage. After he stuck me with the needle for the local anesthesia (the only part that really hurt), I would guess 15 or maybe 20 minutes before he shouted “Normal! Normal!” with a great big smile on his young face. Then gave me a fist bump. Made me feel good! Even though one of the Mexico nurses whispered in my ear in English, “You still need to avoid KFC and cheeseburgers.” We smiled and chuckled at each other.
They quickly rolled me back in the waiting room where the next person was waiting or we traded places. I had to lay real still for 30 minutes before they rolled me out to the ambulance again and another ambulance had just arrived with another angiogram person coming in. Wow! They must like angiograms here! 🙂
BUT THE MOST FUN WAS THE DRIVE BACK to Hospital Alajuela which we did make in 20 minutes because the driver turned on the flashing lights and the siren and use the other loud horns and sounds to weave us through the bumper to bumper traffic on Ruta 1 which goes by the airport and thus heavy traffic all day. It was fun and I’m sure the driver enjoyed it and he did a great job! The Alajuela doctor kept reminding me “Don’t move! Don’t move!” referring specifically to my right leg because that is where they cut into an artery and that is not where you want a rupture or blood coming out. Then the rest of the day and second night was difficult because I had to lay still for 24 hours to help the incision heal and avoid a serious problem. I read on my Kindle and played games, talked a little, ate a little, and had to use a bed urinal, but I survived 24 hours of stillness of at least my right leg. Then another noisy night and a heart attack in front of me, meaning I am very tired now and will go to bed early.
THANK YOU to those of you who sent kind notes and prayed for me. It made a difference! It was a good medical test with a very happy result for a 77 year old with no junk in his arteries! 🙂
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| Keep Walking! Keep Smiling! Pura Vida! |
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| Grasshopper in my Garden Atenas, Costa Rica |
This is one of more than 11,000 species of grasshoppers in Costa Rica. I have yet found a good source of identification of grasshoppers, thus in my gallery only one has a name.
AND TRYING TO BE AN ESL TEACHER
I was asked by a friend and English teacher at Colegio Liceo to lead an after-school “club” of 10 students going on a student exchange program for two weeks in the USA, to a Virginia suburb of DC. It is basically a conversational English class or group to help them be able to talk to people better on their trip. Last night was our first weekly hour meeting over the next three months and my neighbor George has agreed to help. He was a 5th-6th grade teacher in Arizona and is ESL Certified. He will have the class by himself Sept. 4 when I’m in the Caribe.
Last night we got introduced and learned the names, grade levels and interests of the 8 students that showed up (Grades 8-11). I had learning games on greetings, travel problem phrases, and restaurant phrases. For many of them their English vocabulary is worse than my Spanish vocabulary (which is minimal), so we quickly learned that we have a long ways to go for them to have normal conversations in the states. I’m creating my own lesson plans by researching online – not easy, but it worked out okay last night! As they left they each got a list of “76 English Phrases for Traveling with Ease,” which they are to study for next week. I also asked them to write down one American/English singer or band they liked to listen to. Next week I will put a piece of masking tape on each kid’s forehead with a singer/band name and they will have to figure out which one they have with yes/no questions. Then we will dive into the travel phrases. That lesson plan is not made yet. Next Monday I will try to get a group photo to share in my blog post.
Never a dull moment! Pura Vida!
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| Surveyor He will survey your property, providing different reports Atenas, Costa Rica |
See my photo gallery of Home Business Signs in Atenas
