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And you can take that literally since the Limón Landing Strip in on the Caribbean Beach just south of the provincial capital of Limón with a 25 to 30 minute drive to my Hotel Banana Azul in Puerto Viejo where the owner comes down and welcomes me again! 🙂 Here’s 6 arrival afternoon general shots. Though I’ve started photographing birds & butterflies, I’m saving those for later posts.
Today begins what has become almost an annual tradition of spending a week in the Southern Caribbean of Costa Rica, during September when this rainy rainforest has the least amount of rain. After trying a few other hotels, I’ve settled on Banana Azul as my favorite and it is right on the beach (one of the few!) in a favorite room with balcony overlooking the beach and hotel gardens. It is one of my most relaxing weeks of the year! This Puerto Viejo area is south, near the Panama Border and quite different from my other Caribe fave which is north of the port of Limón and in a great wetlands wildlife national park called Tortuguero.
I have just two morning bird hikes scheduled, one in the Cahuita National Park and the other in Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge. Otherwise I just “hangout” at the hotel and beach, walking both the beach and a forested beach road where last year I found a bonanza of butterflies! 🙂
Read on for some of my past creative endeavors from the South Caribbean of Costa Rica . . .
Continue reading “Flying to the Caribe Today!”
I just completed my latest photo book, the second one on Blurb’s “Lay Flat Pages” (no gutter) with 100# Premium Lustre Photo Paper containing 16 sunrise photos in my favorite sunrise place, 14 are two-page spreads! I made it for both the fun of creating and as a gift to the Hotel Banana Azul where all photos were made! There are now several hotels like this across Costa Rica that feature my photo books about them in their lobbies. 🙂 And by the way, this is one I think is worth taking advantage of my bookstore’s “Free Preview” electronically by clicking the cover image below or going to this address and just click the pages to turn them! 🙂
https://www.blurb.com/b/11529264-sunrise-banana-azul
¡Pura Vida!
And by the way, that other “Lay Flat Book” was done way back in 2018 and titled Costa Rica Sunrises and Sunsets. It too is worth taking time for the “Free Preview” with mostly sunsets in that book! Just click that title to go there!
Brief bits of this last week’s news including 2 totally different rich and famous from the United States now living in Costa Rica! 🙂
Or maybe just read these written articles:
Preserve Planet Fights Against Costa Rica’s Plans to Build New Airport
Illegal Logging: The Critical Situation Threatening Costa Rica’s Environment
Costa Rica Expat Living: My Story of Being a Dependent (With an Unexpected Twist) Story of a “dependent” (wife) of a legally working husband and how new law opened up legal work for her (which wasn’t allowed before). CR welcomes us retirees who bring our retirement income with us, but younger working adults who might compete with locals for jobs have many more hoops to jump through! 🙂 But from this story it seems to be getting easier! And I am seeing a lot more working young adult expats, even in little Atenas now, though still most of them work on the internet which is non-competitive to local workers.
Everyone wants to live in Costa Rica now! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
There are so many more photos from my trip back to Banana Azul in the South Caribbean of Costa Rica that I intended to share on the blog, but other things are happening now, thus I refer you to the just-finished Trip Gallery for my 2022 Banana Azul Week, click that link or this image of the first page of the gallery for many more photos from nature . . .
¡Pura Vida!
Yesterday (Saturday) Tropical Storm Julia strengthened into a Category 2 Hurricane over the Caribbean Sea and headed toward Nicaragua where it is expected they will receive extensive damage through today (Sunday) from coast to coast as Julia goes across Nicaragua and El Salvador and parts of southern Honduras to finally dissipate in the Pacific Ocean tomorrow. Nicaragua is on the northern border of Costa Rica but we are not expected to receive much of the wind damage, just a lot of extra rain which could mean some flooding and here that also means mud slides and rock slides in the mountain areas. Otherwise we will not be affected drastically by Hurricane Julia. It was just a mild rain last night (Saturday) as I wrote this. But hurricanes have been known to change course.
I’m mesmerized by flowers everywhere I go in Costa Rica and the Caribe is no exception, though the hotels on the east coast aren’t as ambitious with their gardens as some other places I’ve visited that work hard to have a large variety of sometimes rare and even exotic (non-native) flowers. All of these are native to the best of my knowledge and at least half were growing “wild” along the beach or beach road. And I’ve decided this time to not try and identify them, since maybe half I can’t without research! 🙂 One photo for the email announcement and then a gallery of 14 flowers . . .
Its legal here to photograph people in public, but for some reason I never want them to know I’m photographing them and actually seldom do – BUT on a public beach it is just too inviting. My “People Shots” are now a gallery within my developing trip gallery (above link) with 3 sub-galleries, each linked from the title of its sample photo below . . .
Maybe in a few more days I’ll have the whole trip gallery finished. A lot of photos made this time! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
“To escape and sit quietly on the beach – that’s my idea of paradise.”
– Emilia Wickstead
With (1) the lesser popularity of the Caribbean side of Costa Rica from the Pacific side for both tourists and residents. (2) Lesser development on this side of the country (not a single chain hotel). (3) My chosen hotel being away from the other hotels and more popular white-sand beaches further south, and (4) therefore we who stay at Banana Azul Hotel often have the beach all to ourselves! And that’s nice for the tranquility and for the photos! 🙂
I no longer swim or surfboard in the ocean for many reasons, but I love to walk on beaches and also here I walk on a beach road with glimpses of the ocean through the trees. Plus my favorite beach photos here are my sunrise images which I shared daily each morning last week, so you’ve seen those. But here are a few others shot this year that I basically liked.
Tomorrow I will share a few “People Shots” that I sneaked of people on this beach and the beach road. “People watching” can be fun! 🙂 Here’s one beach shot for the email and 6 more to follow online below . . .
I got photos of more that just butterflies and birds in the CR Caribe! Check out these 8 weird and colorful insects from along the same beach road at Hotel Banana Azul where I photographed birds and butterflies.
Yesterday morning I did the sunrise shoot, showered, ate breakfast, packed and had maybe an hour before my transportation to the little Limón Aeropuerto, hoping I might find another new butterfly species. And I DID! Two in fact! Two totally new species of butterflies for my rapidly growing collection. Not spectacular or particularly beautiful, but exciting to me because they are new! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
More of my growing Costa Rica butterfly collection in my photo galleries:
Sure! I have morning light at home, but never like on the ocean! 🙂 Plus I more often sleep late at home! 🙂 Before breakfast and leaving for Atenas today – 3 more sunrise shots . . .
