Category: Culture

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Fountains Added to Central Park

With the very slow remodeling of Atenas Central Park being done totally by city employees and not an outside contractor, this multi-year project keeps surprising people and this one was not in the initial architect’s drawings of the remodeled park. For the new southwest corner entrance to the square block park, there is now a pair of modern fountains with a hint of historical reflection on the Stone Spheres of Costa Rica (Wikipedia link) and even though the sidewalk is still not completed, the two fountains have been dedicated and are functioning, though you can’t enter the park through this entrance yet! 🙂 Here’s 3 of my cellphone photos plus someone else’s night photo from the dedication I didn’t know about. And to my friend who was hoping they would add a fountain to the park, you got two! 🙂 Though I realize you were wanting an old fashion fountain like in the center of Alajuela’s Central Park. But hey! We have prehistoric stone spheres spritzing water like no other park in Costa Rica! 🙂

Stone Sphere Water Fountains, Atenas Central Park, Costa Rica
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Wildness Disappearing

Well, at least close to towns like Atenas or anywhere within an hour or two from San Jose. But from my porch, or terrace they call it here, I zoomed in on one of the hills nearby that looked undeveloped. The only sign of humans seems to be one small or moderate-sized house at the end of a dirt road, which could be a cool place to live! 🙂

Zooming in on a Nearby Hill, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

Of course Costa Rica has more than 25% of all land protected as wilderness national parks, reserves, or wildlife refuges, but in the more populated Central Valley or anywhere near the capital of San Jose, development is growing rapidly. I am very much aware of how many more cars are on the streets and highways now than just 10 years ago! Plus there seems to be construction work somewhere all the time, even in little Atenas! So it was fun to zoom in on one of the Atenas hills and see only one small house! 🙂

See more of my Roca Verde Terrace Views in that gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

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Juan Santamaria Day

Juan Santamaria was a young man from Alajuela who became one of the few ever “war heroes” in the only significant battle Costa Rica fought in the 1800s when a renegade army of southern Americans came down to claim Central America as slave states and a part of the confederacy. Well, they had temporary control of Nicaragua above us and so the Costa Rica army marched in to keep them out of Costa Rica. Young Juan sneaked behind the enemy line with a torch and set fire to all of the American tents and barracks that had been set up. They all ran and that was the end of making Central America a slave state!

Juan Santamaria Day is actually April 11 (once de abril) but like the U.S., government workers and bankers have moved most of such holidays to the nearest Monday, thus this year is today, Monday, 15 April 2024.

The hometown of Juan still celebrates it on the real day, once de abril, and I happened to be in Alajuela on April 11 getting a letter from Aeropost and on my way to my favorite Mexican Restaurant, Jalapenos, I had to cross the parade street and phone-snapped these two shots of the band from private Catholic High School, Colegio Gregorio Jose Ramirez Castro. Work that name into a ball game cheer! 🙂

High School Band in Alajuela Parade on Juan Santamaria Day, April 11, 2024.
High School Band in Alajuela Parade on Juan Santamaria Day, April 11, 2024.

The Mexican food was better than the parade, so glad I kept walking! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

More . . .

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Lineated Woodpecker

The Lineated Woodpecker or Dryocopus lineatus (eBird link) is one of the more colorful woodpeckers found throughout Central America and in most of South America, standing out with their bright red head of hair! Here he is often confused with the less frequent Pale-billed Woodpecker, found only in Central America and southern Mexico, but his black face and the white neck line running all the way to his bill quickly distinguish him from the Pale-billed which cannot be identified by the bill because both have pale bills! 🙂 My Lineated Woodpecker Gallery shows that I’ve seen him all over Costa Rica including more than once here in my garden where this one was photographed in my Cecropia Tree last week, my favorite bird tree! 🙂

Lineated Woodpecker, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
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Introducing A New Bird Book!

CLICK this front cover image to see a free preview of all pages!

To celebrate what will be 10 years of living in Costa Rica come December, I decided to publish a coffee table book of my favorite bird photos that turned out to be a lot! 174 photos! Each includes both the English and Spanish common names of that bird plus the location where I photographed it. Whether a birder or a lover of “Nature As Art,” I think you will like this 86 page photo book printed on premium matte paper. It might even become a collector’s item some day! 🙂 It will definitely become the book that I gift to the birding lodges I visit over the next year or two! 🙂

You can see a free electronic preview of all 86 pages by clicking the above image of the book cover or go to this web address: https://www.blurb.com/b/11961281-costa-rica-birds

BACK COVER of the book.

¡Pura Vida!

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13 Singing – 1 Photographed!

Since around the first of the year I have been using the sound identification feature of my Merlin phone app to identify birds. For years I only used it to identify birds by photograph. I was slow to adapt to the new sound recording ability, always hesitant to add new technology, like the old man that I am! 🙂 But when I did, I was so surprised at how easy it was to punch a button and record singing birds, usually many at at the same time! With it identifying each one and highlighting the ones singing at that moment! While at Carara Park a week or so ago I heard almost 3 times as many as I photographed! But I still prefer photos! 🙂

So while preparing my breakfast the other morning I turned it on and in 10 minutes it recorded 13 different species singing around my house! Including 2 Trogons! (Black-headed & Gartered). So I took my camera with me to the terrace to eat breakfast and hopefully see and photograph some of those 13. I got useable photos of only one! 🙂

It was the Yellow-green Vireo, Vireo flavoviridis (eBird link) shown by eBird to appear from the southern edges of the USA to the northern edges of South America, so in other words, mostly a Central American! 🙂 Here’s 3 shots from my terrace the other morning while drinking coffee after breakfast. And to be fair, I did see 2 others of those 13 recorded, but did not get useable photos of the Clay-colored Thrush or the Blue-gray Tanager (their back sides). And you can see other photos of this one in my Yellow-green Vireo Gallery which I’ve seen only 2 other times here in Atenas and nowhere else. Now here’s 3 shots from the other morning, including one of him/her singing . . .

Yellow-green Vireo, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
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My Most Memorable Semana Santa

Semana Santa is Spanish for “Holy Week” or “Easter Week” if you prefer and my most memorable and colorful one since moving to Costa Rica was 8 years ago (2016, my 2nd year here) while on a birding tour of Nicaragua and during Semana Santa I was for 3 days in the historical colonial town of Grenada where from my old hotel across from the oldest church I could watch the nightly processionals that along with architecture and the later 87 species of birds photographed made it my most colorful and memorable Easter Week here! (Linked to my photo gallery of that week.)

Easter Week Pageantry, 2016, Granada, Nicaragua
Sunset over Granada, Nicaragua 2016.

He is Risen!

¡Pura Vida!

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A Jillion Miracles!

“I’ve seen a jillion miracles. They’re all around. Every green leaf is a miracle.”

– Jimmy Dean

And I’m back to doing blog posts from my little casita garden for a while now . . .

Leaves of my Cecropia or Guarumo Tree contrast with the blue sky. Atenas, Costa Rica.

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

~C.S. Lewis

Every green leaf is one! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

Check out my Flora & Forest Galleries!

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Villa Lapas

My second overnight trip after moving to Costa Rica nearly 10 years ago was to this locally-owned & operated lodge/hotel near the village of Tarcoles, less than an hour west of Atenas, Villa Lapas. I did not get many bird or other wildlife photos compared to later trips other places, but you can see what I got in my Trip Gallery: Villa Lapas, July 2015. The appeal then and now is that it is located next to Carara National Park, where, with a good guide (that I did not have then), you can photograph a lot of different bird species as you also can on the right Tarcoles River Boat Safari. Since then I’ve discovered lots of better lodges for birds and other nature photography (even in that area – see bottom of post), so why am I returning now? Because of a recent announcement about this little-known place with some rooms arranged as a “Colonial Spanish Jungle Village” becoming a Marriott Resort . . .

Villa Lapas set up as a “Colonial Jungle Village”
in the Transitional Forests of Carara National Park.
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