Tag: map

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Remembering 6+ Years in Costa Rica

A lot of American, Canadian and European retirees choose to spend their last years in the beautiful land of nature called Costa Rica. And I am amazed at how many of them get a house somewhere and just sit on the porch, leaving only for the many necessary functions including immigration paperwork, shopping, medical services, a few for church, etc. While some take an occasional trip to see other parts of Costa Rica, there seem to be only a very small number like me who have a passion for seeing every “nook and cranny” of this beautiful natural paradise. And wow! What most of these gringos are missing! 🙂

For more than two years of the past 6, I traveled to a different park, reserve, or nature lodge every month. Last year I decided to slow it down to one place every two months, then got even that slowed down with the Coronavirus Pandemic. While this year was scheduled for a trip every two months before the villain Cancer came into my life. Meaning only God knows how many more places I will get to visit or revisit as I have been going back to favorite places more lately. Either way I get to be immersed in nature, my passion!

One wall of my living room is covered with photos of birds I’ve photographed here and another wall behind my dining table has photos of me on adventures around the world from Africa to Tennessee with a metal print of my social media logo, meme, or “gravatar!” 🙂 And below that gravatar is a map of the many places I’ve visited in Costa Rica. I just updated that map including my anticipated trip to Bosque del Cabo on Osa Peninsula this July for my 81st birthday, the only “new” place this year. The rest of the year I have 2 or maybe 3 scheduled repeat visits to favorite places, assuming I will be able to travel: Caribe Puerto Viejo and South Pacific Uvita for sure with Tambor Bay a maybe.

  • Birds Wall
  • Adventure Wall

Since I’m not sure how much more traveling I will get to do here in my final years paradise, I decided to share the updated map that is on the wall mentioned above. Here:

Places I’ve visited in Costa Rica over 6 years in no particular order.

And just for fun, here’s the Google map that shows where Google has tracked me going all over Costa Rica with the number of times. Of course the solid red blotch is the Central Valley where I live and they’ve tracked me moving around near home a lot! 🙂

Where Google has “tracked me.” This map is more than a year old. And I have no explanation for the dot out in the Pacific Ocean. A Google error I assume. I have not been that far away from land! 🙂

“Jobs fill your pockets, adventures fill your soul.”

~Unknown

¡Pura Vida!

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All Over Costa Rica!

I was thinking of doing a Costa Rica Map on a cork board with map pins showing where I’ve been – which is a lot more places than most people I know here among both Ticos and Expats. Then suddenly in my electronic mailbox appears an email from Google Maps titled: Google Maps Timeline 2019 Update.  Yep, it included the feature photo map above and some other stuff  that seems to go back to 2015, my first year here when I began traveling Costa Rica. It seems I approved them tracking me (my cell phone) back then and this is what I get! Should I be afraid of Google or send them a thank you note?   🙂

The big red blob in the middle is the space between Atenas & San Jose that includes Alajuela and all the places I go there including the big SJO Airport. I cannot explain the red dot in the Pacific Ocean, but if you study the map more you will see the large green area in the south-southeast above Panama that has no red spots for my visits. One main reason is that it is the Talamanca Mountains, much of which is indigenous reserves with no public roads going through there plus protected national forests not allowing travel. My May trip will put me on the Western edge of that area at Chirripó and my visit to the Bribri Yorkin Reserve had me on the eastern edge. And that is it!   🙂   So just 17 more parks/reserves to go!   🙂

After 37 national parks & reserves are visited, I will do a photo book like I did with all of Tennessee’s State Parks in my photo book A Walk in the Woods Through All 54 Tennessee State Parks. There are technically only 28 national parks here! But the nine reserves count as equals and for my nature photography purposes especially, so I’m saying 37, with only 17 more to go! I don’t have a car which slows me down a little! But I will get there!   🙂

See links to the photo galleries of the 20 National Parks & Reserves I have already visited  or for all of my travels over Costa Rica browse through the family of galleries:

Costa Rica Trips (80) which is the best collection of my photos here!

 

“My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.”

~Claude Monet

¡Pura vida!

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Day of the Book

This was April 27 and I missed posting because computer was down.
See or download these and a couple of more photos at my Day of the Book Photo Gallery
Atenas, Costa Rica

 

2018 Day of the Book
Atenas, Costa Rica

 

2018 Day of the Book
Atenas, Costa Rica

 

2018 Day of the Book
Atenas, Costa Rica

 

2018 Day of the Book
Atenas, Costa Rica

 

2018 Day of the Book
Atenas, Costa Rica

Tomorrow I leave for Arenal Observatory Lodge for 5 nights and I hope a lot of bird photos!  🙂

It is the red #5 on the map below or northwest of Atenas in north central Costa Rica. I will be inside the National Park in a forest at the base of the volcano with great views of it and Lake Arenal, considered one of the best windsurfing lakes in the world. A great week expected! (But not windsurfing!)   🙂
Map of planned trips for this year through February 2019
Clicking on image will make it a little bigger for easier reading.
There is so much to see and so many birds to photograph that it is hard to work them all in!   🙂
¡Pura Vida!
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A Map of My CR Travels Thus Far

Click to see a little larger and thus easier to read. It may be that only people who live here or travel in Costa Rica a lot can appreciate the broad variety of places I have visited in 3 years and this is only the big name places like National Parks. There are so many little towns and places I have visited like Zarcero, Sarchi, Pura Vida Gardens, La Paz Gardens, Zoo Ave, waterfalls, fiestas, farm tours, etc. that simply won’t fit on this little map! Continuous adventure!

I am so fortunate to live in such a beautiful natural place with so much to see and photograph! I love it here! And I enjoy every moment of every day whether traveling, sitting in my garden, or waiting in some long, slow government line. ¡Pura Vida!  

AND ADDING TO THE MAP THIS YEAR:
I earlier listed some of the places scheduled for my visits the next few months and now I have extended the list for one trip every month through next February 2019. So if any of you guys in the states want to visit, you will have to work around my trips or join me on one of them!  🙂   I have a trip-a-month for May through February with reservations for places that will help fill in the white spaces on the above map with 4 repeats: 


It promises to be my best “bucket list” year yet here in Costa Rica and I’m doing exactly what I planned to do when I made the decision to move here in retirement for these final “golden years” of life! (The “decision process” was documented earlier on this blog, starting with my first post, June 26, 2014.) Wonderful decision! (Not fully made until September that year.) As my friend Bill Peters at LifeWay used to say: “Every day’s a holiday and every week’s a vacation!” (In jest about working at LifeWay) But when you retire in Costa Rica that is almost true! ☺  


Copied from a blog of an expat living in Jaco, Costa Rica.    🙂


¡Pura Vida!
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Still Confusing Costa Rica & Puerto Rico?

Puerto Rico is in the Eastern Caribbean Sea and I (Costa Rica) am between the Southwestern Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is 1,290 miles (2,000+ kilometers) from our San Jose Airport or a more than 5 hour flight. It takes half as long to get to Miami or Houston or Dallas by plane. Above is a Google Map giving directions from San Jose, Costa Rica to San Juan, Puerto Rico. And the “Juan Santamaria” is just the name of our main airport near our capital city of San Jose.

The best explanation map I’ve found online won’t let me copy it, but here is the link:
http://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-costa-rica-to-puerto-rico

It is very easy for North Americans to get the two places confused because they sound a lot alike, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, and they are both tropical with beautiful beaches. But believe me, there is a huge difference beyond that!

And I appreciate the prayers and the thankfulness that I am okay. It is rainy season, but no hurricanes or earthquakes hitting us now. We are getting extra rain because of a tropical depression off the coast of Nicaragua & Honduras that is headed north toward the states (TX to FL panhandle) as Hurricane Nate. Unusual for one to start near us but possible. Learn more about it at:
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/tropical-depression-sixteen-tropical-storm-nate-caribbean-gulf-of-mexico

And here is another map showing ALL of Latin America and all our relationships.

Hoping this will humble my friends in the States.
See how you are just one part of the Americas?
And more countries speak Spanish than English.

Pura Vida from COSTA RICA  in Central America, 1,290 miles from Puerto Rico!   🙂

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I’m in Central America — Not on an Island in the Caribbean! :-)

Think of us as near the Panama Canal!
And South America!

We are between Nicaragua & Panama.
Only Panama separates us from Columbia, South America.
And there is a big Colombian influence here
including 1 airline, restaurants, and my barber!  🙂

And there are 5 totally different worlds between us and Mexico!
 And only Panama separating us from Columbia
and South America!
Costa Rica is NOT Puerto Rica, an island in the Caribbean sea just south of Florida USA. (This seems to still be a point of confusion for a lot of my American friends who are geographically challenged!) So I was nowhere near the Hurricane Irma that just ravaged the Caribbean Islands and Florida. There was also a smaller hurricane and earthquake that hit Mexico. I am 5 countries south of Mexico, so no where near their recent hurricane and earthquake either. (But thanks for the prayers anyway!) For more on our location with maps, see Costa Rica on Wikipedia. 
Now, for the last week I’ve been talking about my visit to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica because our east coast is on “The Caribbean Sea” which is really a part of the Atlantic Ocean I think, and I’m right near where ships move from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Panama Canal. Again study the above maps. Sorry if my visit last week to our Costa Rica “Caribbean” confused you! And by the way, Sept-Oct are the two driest months in our Caribbean and I had no rain there, though I flew back through rain clouds to San Jose where the central valley is in its two rainiest months now! The opposite of our Caribbean coast. So I travel where the weather is good!  🙂
¡Pura Vida!
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Atenas Central Gets Street Signs!

The center of town!
Corner of 0 & 0!

UNBELIEVABLE! Or at least “un-Tico” to have street signs! My goodness! What will they think of next? House numbers?

I have traveled all over Costa Rica and the only place with street signs so far is downtown San Jose that I have noticed. The Tico way to give directions is by using obvious landmarks with a number of meters from it to the next landmark or the destination. For example if you need to get to my house and are driving from Alajuela:

On Ruta 3 drive past La Coope Gasolinera to the first legal left turn or second street after the traffic light. Drive 500 meters to the end of road at Escuela Central and turn left. Go 100 meters to El Pinguino shop and turn right. Then in 100 meters, turn left and go 600 meters to the Roca Verde sign on the right. Inside the gate go 200 meters to the third black gate on left numbered 105. Only some developments like ours have house numbers.

Now read under the second photo the directions to my house from Central Atenas with street signs and it is not much shorter!

Of course that needs to be in Spanish. And if you don’t know, a city block is approximately 100 meters, but “blocks” are not generally used for directions here.

To get to my house from central,
take Calle 3 south to Avenida 8,
THIS CORNER
left 500 meters to the Roca Verde
sign and gate on the right, then
straight ahead 200 meters to 3rd
black gate on left with number 105.
Now say that in Spanish! 🙂

And I must add that I am glad my bank fees are at least partially going to help the community. The little logo at the bottom of each street sign is for Banco Nacional.

For those who still think I live in the jungle, see what modern progress we are making down here!? And this was a big surprise to everyone! Most did not know the names of the streets, so I figure 4 or 5 years to get used to the street names, then maybe house numbers!

And for anyone who cares, Calles run north-south and Avenidas east-west. East of Calle 0 are odd numbered Calles and west even numbered. North of Avenida 0 are odd numbered and south even numbered. I wonder how many have figured that out yet?  🙂

We’ve actually had these street names for awhile, though the only place I have seen them is on a paper map from a real estate company and on the Google Map. But it is a rare Tico who knows the name of any street in town! And the sign at right, 3rd & 8th is the last street sign before my house. They have signed what is generally called “Central Atenas” or the core of downtown.

The city is hard at work making improvements. In Central Park a children’s playground has been added with swings, slides and climbing things. Can the kids still climb the trees? Also, there are new brighter street lights in park for night events.

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A Few Steps Closer

Phons sent me his photo of one of my future neighbors, an iguana.
Hope I get photos this good! I think he and I will get along fine!

I’ve made the deposit and it is confirmed that I will be moving into an apartment at Hacienda La Jacaranda in Atenas, Costa Rica the end of December. It is run by a lovely Dutch couple and he, Phons von der Bom, has been corresponding with me and sent the above photo plus one of a butterfly earlier.  If you zoom in on a Google Map of Atenas enough you can find the name of the apartments on the map, just north of downtown within about 8 blocks of the Central Plaza and a Super Mercado and of course the weekly Farmers’ Market every Friday. And the Map Link above includes a map pin for Helados POPS, the best ice cream in Costa Rica and some of the best I’ve ever eaten. I had my first Fig Ice Cream there!

 Birth Certificate has been returned with an Apostille on it, thus one more document ready for the residency application. I earlier printed out my filing with the U.S. Embassy (State Department) of my intentions called a “Smart Traveler Enrollment Program” which Jose wanted on file. But I am still waiting on a letter from Social Security proving a minimum income for residency. Even though the last guy I talked with said he would do it right then, I really expected it to take a while. I just called our Metro Police Department and for the “police report” Costa Rica is asking for on me, they say they call it a “Background Check.” I simply go downtown to the Criminal Justice Building to the Records Window and for $13 they will provide one while I wait. So maybe tomorrow. When that is done, I will only lack the Social Security letter.

And the next step soon is to order my one-way airline ticket to San Jose, Costa Rica and I’m hoping I have enough air miles for it and they have space on their planes for an air miles ticket! If not, one way should cost less than round trip. Then the main job is to clean out this house, decide what to take, what to store, and what to sell or give away – the biggest job of all!