The Atenas Expats Men’s Club had another trip Saturday and I participated, the first time in several months. A bus load of us traveled to San Jose for a lunch stop at El Rodeo and then the afternoon at a portion of the two-day International 2018 Costa Rica Open Dance Fest, an annual event and contest (like “Dancing With the Stars”) that attracts contestants from most of the Latin American countries and the United States. We saw just a small portion or about 3 hours worth.
This time I’m asking you to go to my photo gallery on the event:
My Costa Rica Birds Gallery is still big with almost 270 species of birds included but is a little cleaner and easier to use now, especially for birders. Instead of one gallery with a jumble of 400 to 500 photos arranged alphabetically, it is now a folder with a SEPARATE GALLERY FOR EACH SPECIES so there is no longer the confusion of having multiple images of some species, but when you browse you will only look at one image of each species and then click it if you want to see that image larger or see multiple images of that bird. A separate gallery for each species. That will make it even more efficient as my collection of bird photos grows and gets better!
Plus birders will especially like that I have them ARRANGED BY FAMILIES or in the order found in the book The Birds of Costa Rica, A Field Guide.
Emerald Toucanet — One of the 269 species in my new CR Birds gallery.
And you might want to know that I am uploading the full-size image here so you can DOWNLOAD ONE FOR FREE and use as you wish or PURCHASE A PHOTO (like the above Toucanet) as a “Card,” “Paper Print,” “Wall Art” print (I’m favoring high-gloss metal now) “Keepsake,” or “Phone Case.” It is a service of Smugmug.com with multiple vendors at their prices with me getting only $1 per order which is okay with me because I’m retired now! 🙂 And not in business! At the bottom of each enlarged photo is a green button BUY for you to go to the purchase options. Check it out for all the neat options for some of my birds or other Costa Rica photos!
Flash Postscript! 2 of my photos made the final 10 cut for header of the Facebook Group Atenas Costa Rica InfoMine are the Spanish Dancers & the Pink & Blue Sunset Mountains. For a header I prefer the sunset photo as better for type face going over it, but I do not expect to win, believing that either the orange tree or green landscape will win and of those two I prefer the landscape also because it is better for titles printing over it. Members of the facebook group vote for the new group header photo.
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson
Hopefully I am beyond 10,000 by now! 🙂 ¡Pura Vida!
Sometimes the people watching the parade are the most interesting thing seen! 🙂 The family portrait above tells a story, I think! And of course the children are always the most photogenic! This slideshow is my last on this year’s Independence Day Parade. See if you can find the 4 people with eyes glued to their device screens (2 are above). Cell phones dominate people around the world! 🙂
And next year I’m adding a new parade by going to the Caribe during Carnival! I’ll photograph the smaller one in Puerto Viejo and not the big one in Limon where I’ve heard it can be dangerous. I don’t want to lose my cameras again! (I was at the Puntarenas Carnival Parade my first year here when my camera bag was snatched from a sidewalk cafe.) But anyway, more parades coming!
¡Larga vida a Costa Rica!
Slideshow: Independence Day Parade Atenas – Audience
It is the one patriotic parade of the year so of course it has to have lots of flags! From the primary school through high schools are flags here and though no good pix, there were some with adults representing the Fire Department and Red Cross. Here’s a few of the students with flags in a short slideshow:
The children were the main part of the parade this year with respect to the teens. They are taught that this is a historical event and thus most are dressed in historical clothing for the parade. And of course kids are cute and make good photos, so enjoy the slide show of kids in the parade and later will be a post of the audience which includes a lot more kids.
The 5th & 6th Grade girls at Escuela Central were by far the best of very few dancers in this year’s parade and you will quickly see that I picked one as the star or best dancer. Enjoy the
“Quince de septiembre” (fifteenth of September) is the more common name kind of like “4th of July” is probably used more in the states than “Independence Day.”
There is a nation-wide strike going on in Costa Rica, so it affected some aspects of the parade this year with nothing from the university in parade but all the local and neighboring schools were happy to make it almost a nino parade, which is fine! Today’s post is just some of the bands with other aspects of parade in the next few days. Note that here bands are all dominated by both drums and boys, though more difficult instruments are more likely played by girls. Another day I will show dancing which is almost all girls and so it goes as cultures, femininity and masculinity struggle everywhere, especially in schools. 🙂
Slideshow: School Bands in Atenas Independence Day Parade
Like with every trip I make around my new home country I could keep posting about this trip and unique things about the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. But I won’t. Here’s some separate little slideshows on Banana Azul, my favorite hotel in Puerto Viejo so far. I may get brave and try some more hotels one of these days, though I have tried Cariblue and Almonds & Corals and they don’t quite equal Banana Azul in my opinion.
Tree Trimming
If you drill down into their website very far you will see that this is a “gay friendly” hotel which implies that a lot are not in this conservative Catholic country. I did not know that on my first visit and it would not have made a difference but it might to you, so I let you know. My casual observation and prominence of straight couples in the hotel indicates it is certainly not an exclusively gay hotel which I doubt could be profitable here. I did learn this time that the owners are two gay men from Canada whom I have still not met. The staff appears to be mostly straight, though can you really tell by looking at someone? I know my masseuse is straight because he told me about his daughter and the difficulties of going through a divorce with which I of course identified.
Anyway, the location right on the beach is perfect. The facilities are very good if basic and immersed in nature, and the service is better than most places plus their food is better than the other two hotels I’ve tried in the area. There is a new hotel in Puerto Viejo that claims to be upscale and have gourmet food which I may try someday, Le Cameleon, though it costs twice as much!
And I know that “Tree Trimming” doesn’t sound like an exciting activity for a slideshow, but in Costa Rica a Tico with a machete climbs a tree and wacks away. Yes, they have saws here, but this is just the way it is done, including when my trees are trimmed. Hotel slideshows:
My Room – The Howler Suite
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Banana Azul Hotel staff
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Banana Azul Hotel Grounds
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Maintenance Tree Trimming
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Beachside Wilderness Road
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See my TRIP Photo Gallery: 2018 Caribe South, Puerto Viejofor many other kinds of photos from this fun trip with these Sub-Gallery Names:
BIRDS
OTHER ANIMALS
Banana Azul Howler Suite
Banana Azul Staff
Tree Trimming
Gandoca-Manzanillo Refuge
Mirador Manzanillo
Beaches
Surfers
Waterfall Jumpers
Bribri Indigenous Village
Biking Puerto Viejo
Walking Puerto Viejo
Beachside Wilderness Road
And for more on the South Caribe see these other past trip galleries:
When you are talking about the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, remember that there are two other parts not included above: (1) The port city of Limon which I generally avoid with its high-crime reputation like the Pacific Coast port city of Puntarenas where my first camera bag was stolen. And (2) one of my favorite places, in the North Caribbean, Tortuguero, “The Amazon of Costa Rica.” I’m returning there in February and trying a new hotel/lodge. See photos of my 2016 visit there and I even had an earlier one in 2010 on the Caravan.com Tour. A real jungle adventure!
Everywhere I go in Costa Rica I find birds and other animals to photograph and this trip was no exception. No new animal sightings here this time for me unless that purple grasshopper is truly different from the other “Giant Grasshoppers” I’ve seen and photographed. But there are some different kinds of shots this time and 11 to 13 different species. Enjoy the brief slideshow:
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Green Iguana male with mating orange color
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
~Jane Goodall
See my TRIP Photo Gallery: 2018 Caribe South, Puerto Viejofor many other kinds of photos from this fun trip and for more on the South Caribe see these other trip galleries:
And oh yes, today is 15 Sept–Independence Day–and I made photos of the parade, but need to process and want to finish my Caribe visit posts first with one or two more. So the parade is coming here soon! 🙂
Some trips I put more energy into getting many more bird photos, this year in South Caribe was more relaxed and slower, focusing a little more on culture and people, but here are my 10 birds and 1 nest photos representing 8 species with 3 having both male and female photos. My one “lifer” or first-time seen bird was the Gray-necked Wood-Rail.
Birds are still my first passion, but tomorrow I will share the “Other Animals” seen here this year including one of my better sloth photos shot near the hotel, as were most of the birds. I saw a few water birds from a distance but not as many as usually seen here. And I’m very pleased with my new Tamron 60mm lense which has really helped to zoom in on more birds!
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The sound of birds stops the noise in my mind.
~Carly Simon
See my TRIP Photo Gallery: 2018 Caribe South, Puerto Viejofor many other kinds of photos from this fun trip and for more on the South Caribe see these other past trip galleries:
