See more in My Home Garden GALLERY.
¡Pura Vida!
Kitchen Window Garden-View
#1 Best Travel Destination AND #1 Best Place to Retire!
No big surprise for those of us who live here, but Costa Rica was named as the #1 Travel Destination for 2024 by Travel & Leisure Magazine AND the International Living Magazine and organization simultaneously named Costa Rica as the #1 Best Place to Retire in 2024! Read about it in Travel & Leisure. Or on International Living website.
For someone who made what a few American friends back in Nashville thought was a radical or crazy decision to move here in 2014, these announcements confirm the good decision I made back then! :-)
And these rankings are a good celebration of my 9 years of living in Costa Rica (as of December 24, 2023 — 2+ weeks ago). And my survival of cancer a celebration of the excellent healthcare here! Plus there is no better place for a nature lover and nature photographer like me! Tell your nature-lover friends to follow my blog to see what it is like to be “Retired in Costa Rica!” :-)
¡Pura Vida!
Cloudy Morning Hills & Gallery Opening
The Hills of Atenas the other day (October 2). I tried to do a panorama that didn’t “catch” or all match, so this is just one section that depicts the clouds or fog in the hills surrounding Atenas many early mornings, as seen from my terrace. There seems to be something “magical” or “mysterious” happening when the morning air is like this. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Report on Galería ARTenas Opening
We had a great opening to our little art gallery yesterday with hundreds of people coming to see (and some buy) hundreds of pieces of art. I think it was a big success and that many people in Atenas will become regular visitors and customers. We have a VIP Opening November 5 (government officials, etc.) and the JIT or “Just in Time for Christmas” arts and crafts fair the second week of December, so lots of things planned to motivate return visits. I plan to work with the gallery until sometime in January and then I am going to phase out this old man who is finding it a little too much now at age 83, but after that I may have an item or two in the gallery on consignment but will go back to photography just for fun and sharing it on the blog. So keep reading this blog for my usual flow of nature photography. 🙂 ~Charlie
And a few shots from the Gallery Opening . . .
¡Pura Vida!
See You Tomorrow!
¡Pura Vida!
Your Invitation – Su Invitación #2
Your Invitation – Su Invitación
Blooming Cactus?
No – though the first time I saw these bright pink flowers on top of the cactus plant at a house I walk by frequently on my way to town, I thought is was going to be a beautiful cactus! But it seems that the owner of that house has allowed his Bougainvillea to climb over from the wall to the cactus and from a distance, the second photo, it looks like it’s blooming. And some cactus here do bloom, but I’ve not seen that one bloom yets.
Renewed Residency Today
I went to San Jose this morning to renew my residency with an attorney and 3 other American expats in Atenas. Since we were all three “Adultos mayores” or senior adults, we did not have to stand in that long line in my photo, but instead were escorted to the front of the line where we got the next available window to finish processing our paperwork (having paid in advance the fee amounting to a little over $100 USD, 66,000 colones). Then they photograph you and your new plastic card is ready in 30 to 40 minutes while you wait in an outside patio with coffee available. 🙂 Plus at the same time they email you the new (since my last renewal) electronic card that you keep on your phone and can use just like the plastic card. Getting too modern for me! 🙂 It is pictured below this Immigration Office line photo with my numbers scratched out. The actual blue plastic card is pictured in the center of the electronic one. Plus the plastic card is also electronic for card readers like on the public bus and government offices.
Playground Equipment Arrives!
And as I expected, it is very modern or contemporary and seems to be geared to preschool and younger primary school kids. My feature shot at top shows a young couple holding up their child to see the installation. Below is a shot of the workers installing the new play things and artificial turf which I guess is better than the gravel base installed earlier. 🙂 I made these shots yesterday and expect it to be several days before it is open for the kids to play on when I will make another cell phone shot of an active playground. 🙂 For new followers of this blog, this one area of the Atenas Central Park is just one of many very slow steps in this small town’s renovating the Central Park here for 3 or 4 years now. You can see all of my Park Renovation photos in the photo gallery: Remodeling Central Park Atenas.
THREE MORE PHOTOS BELOW . . .
Garden Pix
Walking through the garden on two mornings (March 11 & 12) and I chose these shots to share in a little slide show. Rainy Season usually sorta starts the middle of April and really starts in May, but by March 12 we have already had 3 little but nice rains! So I’m glad as is my garden! 🙂
Each and every bloom is unique and beautiful to me. Enjoy walking through my garden with the slide show below and here is the only one I can’t identify, from across the driveway in neighbor’s yard . . .
