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In Alajuela a couple of weeks ago while waiting on my bus I snapped this statue of dancers in a neighborhood city park where I temporarily catch my bus back to Atenas. Ticos love dancing and do in the parks a lot when bands perform, but it is rare to see any Tico this overweight! Maybe the couple is suppose to be tourists? 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
See my Alajuela Gallery for more photos from the provincial capital.
The host of My Photo Gallery is SmugMug.com and they regularly produce little short videos about photography or photographers and the little one they released this month shares in 3.5 minutes how four or fve different persons see their world through “This Lens” chronicling a growing family, promoting a cause, capturing nature like me and another the magic of outdoor sports. I thought it interesting enough to share on my blog:
My lens? I’ll just keep capturing the works of God through nature! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
The feature photo by Tom Oakley is of me many years ago on a nature photography trip in Tennessee with the Nashville Photography Club. You can read more about the history of my love of photography after retirement on my Photography Page.
The leaf of a Heliconia Flower dies in my garden and I see . . .
Trumpet Pointing up Graceful Color Burnished Bronze Amply Dying Supportive Green Leaf Beauty Forever In Death
Or the story in photos . . .
Continue reading “Beauty in Death”
I can’t seem to quit photographing the clouds on the hills opposite my terrace! 🙂 See many other better vistas from my terrace in my gallery titled: From My Roca Verde Terrace! The vistas from my terrace are just one of the many blessings I have from my decision to color my sunset years “Retired in Costa Rica.” The two shown here were made on different days, June 2 & 15, one zoomed in on the distant clouds with my Tamron zoom lens and the second one with my cell phone camera. 🙂
Go to the top of my GALLERY and browse through many topics including especially my TRIPS galleries (my favorites) to see many more reasons I enjoy Costa Rica beyond the vistas!
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
~Rabindranath Tagore
¡Pura Vida!
Day before yesterday my gardeners came with several upgrades for my garden which, like lots of my projects, started with just one flower and then, well, I kind of kept expanding it! 🙂 It started with this flower I saw at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel and liked so much, I wanted one! I sent this photo below to my gardener. He told me he could get one and then when he was here and we talked in person I “remembered a few other things” I would like for them to do when they bring the new flower. 🙂
My extras ended up being the biggest job (and expense), but I’m so glad that I got all of this done! This is where I live and I’ve slowed down a little on traveling, meaning I want my home to be a tropical paradise – my continuous vacation place! 🙂
This Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Wikipedia link) was in this Guarumo or Cecropia Tree long enough for multiple efforts to photograph it, though in the shadows or no good light, at Chachagua Rainforest Hotel grounds. A peaceful creature! 🙂 In a peaceful place! 🙂
Continue reading ““Upside-down Yogi” (Sloth)”“The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips…I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at a sloth in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of scientific probing.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi
“Everybody needs time to reflect and contemplate, and the most inspirational and peaceful place to do so is in nature.”
~Akiane Kramarik
¡Pura Vida!
TRIP GALLERY: May 2022, Chachagua Rainforest Hotel
The feature photo is their main or largest waterfall with several other small ones like the one at the swim hole I showed in my May 16 Arrival at Chachagua Post. And repeated here:
And tourists getting their photos by this falls . . .
Continue reading “Chachagua Waterfalls”
NOTE: I still plan on my first report from Chachagua Rainforest tonight, but for morning readers, this lifestyle report 🙂 . . .
Now you could call my bus-riding “cultural” or “simple living” or “green living” etc. But Saturday I road the bus to Alajuela again after almost cutting it out for 2 years because of Covid and the dangers of infection in such close quarters. For example, one of my old bus drivers died of Covid he caught as a driver to and from San Jose from Atenas.
But during this past Saturday’s bus trip I felt all the tension and stress caused by the fraudulent use of my debit card just disappeared and I vowed then that I would do this regularly again now. Covid is waning here and I’m feeling safer with all travel now, though I still consider my hidden jungle lodges safer than the cities! 🙂
First you must know that I have not owned a car since 2014 when I moved to Costa Rica and even though I rented cars a few times during my first 2 years here just for trips outside of Atenas, I soon discovered the joy of walking and taking buses and taxis and for awhile was taking bus trips all over the country. I now use a private driver for more of my trips (especially with Covid), but the more regular bus trips to Alajuela (and fewer to San Jose) will now continue while still wearing a mask. And as a senior adult, the Alajuela trip is free and to San Jose half price, like the equivalent of 75 to 80¢! 🙂
Here are more views of the new Central Park Sign including a selfie and what it looks like at night and from behind! 🙂 My earlier reports on the sign did not include the finished product at night or from behind! 🙂
