Friday of Healthcare Tour
Old Man Tree in Breakfast Room |
A stop by CPI Spanish Immersion School in Heredia for one short lesson. |
Visited the smaller public hospital in San Ramon. Public hospitals aren’t as fancy and pretty as private, but very clean and functional inside. |
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Paul & Gloria’s view with a Poro Tree blooming. Now is time for Poro. |
Lunch at home of Paul & Gloria Yeatman with guest speakers. |
Visiting the San Ramon Feria or Farmers’ Market Friday afternoon. Paul & Gloria emphasize this as a part of healthcare! |
We also visited a small neighborhood clinic, farmacia, bank, community center, Red Cross which does all the emergency ambulances, a museum, and talked about insurance, the CAJA government healthcare, homecare provided by CAJA, and even a presentation by a volunteer organization encouraging us to volunteer. Whew! A full day! But very helpful. They were showing us what it is really like for medical care in a local community, in this case San Ramon. I will do a separate post on San Ramon and give my comparison to Atenas. This ended the Healthcare Tour at dinner time in San Ramon. I spent the night there and tried to post these photos but the little La Posada Hotel had very slow internet, so I saved them for today, Saturday and will purposefully do two posts. The next one with a few shots of San Ramon sans-healthcare!
Christmas in San Jose Photos
http://www.ticotimes.net/2015/12/25/photos-christmas-2015
Tico Times photos – this of the lighting of tree at Children’s Hospital |
AND MY DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS?
And the crazy thing is that it is during this windy, sometimes dusty period that we have the most tourists and snowbirds trying to get away from cold weather up north. I think I’ve decided I like the rainy season (Jul-Oct) or “green season” better and it’s two shoulder periods (May-Jun & Oct-Nov) which have very little rain but are greener and more pleasant. So for the next 3 months or so we put up with wind, dust and snow birds! Then tranquility begins again! 🙂
The Trees Are Our Friends!
A new sign just appeared alongside the road I walk to Roca Verde, Calle 8 |
The rough Google translation to English:
The trees are our friends, always await us in the same place.
ADECA
Yellow Bells Keep Increasing!
Up close they are a very bright yellow trumpet-shaped flower |
The Yellow Bells are blooming earlier than I expected or remember from last year and do hope they are still around when Reagan arrives in February. They started with a few blooms on the high tips of limbs that get the most sun and are now spreading all over. They do attract hummingbirds!
From my lunch table today at about 1:30 facing NW. |
From the street today at 2:00 PM (bad time for photo) |
An even worse image at 2:00 PM but you can see that my terrace is surrounded! |
Bouquets on the terrace! |
And color below my horizon views! |
Plus they are already coloring the ground as blossoms drop! |
A tree in my neighbor’s yard. |
Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.~Luther Burbank
Yellow Bells Begin Blooming
Dry season begins and these trees in my yard begin to bloom and if like last year will continue through March or April. |
I zoom in for the flowers because . . . |
They are on the opposite side of trees from my terrace where the afternoon sun shines, but maybe later they will bloom on this side too! Summer has begun! |
“Where flowers bloom so does hope.”– Lady Bird Johnson, Public Roads: Where Flowers Bloom
Busy days ahead!
Tonight I go to Su Espacio’s “Arts Festival” which is more of a dance recital. I’m the photographer.
Tomorrow, Thursday, I go to San Jose early to be fingerprinted for my residency application, which is no guarantee that I will get it soon, but at least it is in the process!
Friday I may have to help shop for any angel tree kids we have not received gifts for.
Saturday is the Angel Tree party in the morning and I get a rent car in the afternoon for my Sunday to Wednesday birding near Volcan Turrialba.
Then just a couple of more Spanish lessons for this year before I get a break from conjugations and verbs! I’m considering a trip to Nicaragua over Christmas but if I don’t do that, I will make the border visa run on December 30.
Textures of the Rain Forest
While along the Yorkin River in a Bribri indigenous people village I captured several shots of the forest & its textures. East of Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica |
― Gustave Flaubert, November
I Love My Trees!
Strangler Fig Tree by the road in front yard. |
Palm Tree behind my Guarumo Tree in side yard which is my front yard, balcony |
Guarumo Tree leaf, up close. This is a type of cecropia tree. Leaves are the favorite food of sloths, and the seeds of Keel-billed Toucans! Mine has to get a lot larger for animals though! |
Yellow Bell Tree is the name I choose from many it is called. My front yard will be beautiful with 4 of them come February-March! |
Ylang-Ylang Tree, is known for its wonderful smell or aroma! Mine is new, but hope for the aroma before a year is up! A source of perfumes! |
Unknown Tree (for now) I see out my kitchen window. |
Want to improve your health? Go Live Near Trees says an article in The Washington Post.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
~Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
Carara National Park Plants
Pixie Cup Fungi, Carara National Park, Costa Rica |
Ceiba Tree, Carra National Park, Costa Rica Also called Kapok or Silk Cotton Tree In all tropical forests I’ve seen, Africa, South America |
The back side of the above Ceiba has a “cave” |
Rain forests have an incredible variety of trees and plants. My guide Victor leads the way down and old road used as trail now. |
One of the several varieties of Cecropia Trees, similar to my Guarumo but not the same. Cousins! This whole family of trees has multiple medicinal uses. |
Rare plant that only grows in this particular transitional forest and only in the shade. Has medicinal uses. |
And another fungus! 🙂 |
“The clearest way to the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
— John Muir
Pura Vida Gardens
After checking in my jungle hotel Thursday, I drove 6 km up the dirt road to a beautiful garden:
Gardens carved out of the rainforest, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and threatening rain, near my hotel on a dirt road buena vista |
Miles of paved or maintained trails with every tropical plant imaginable! sendero del jardín |
What I hope my “Maraca Plant” will look like in a year or two! Also called “Shampoo Ginger” or in Spanish plantas jengibre But local Ticos call it the Maraca Plant which is the name I’m using. |
And hoping I get several blooms like this next year! flores jengibre |
Many unknown to me flowers like this and too many to show here! Desconocido para mí |
A Water Hyacinth like we had in The Gambia Eichhornia crassipes |
On the edge of Carara National Park just like my hotel grounds. Tomorrow’s post! Parque Nacional Carara |
And a view of Manantial de Agua Viva Waterfalls, one of tallest in Costa Rica. I was going to hike to bottom, but decided safer to not do it solo! Maybe later! |