“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!” ~John Muir
Photo from my terrace, 6 AM, Atenas, Costa Rica.
See also my Vistas Photo Gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
Mountain Morning
Morning Walk Vistas
Just the views are a reason to walk even if no birds or flowers! 🙂 The cow pasture is across from my house, included to show you how much higher the grass is in rainy season. All other views are from my street just up the hill from my house. And people have similar views all over Costa Rica! One of many reasons I retired in Costa Rica! Pura Vida! 🙂
And CLICK an image to enlarge it!
For more Costa Rica Vistas, see that gallery.
¡Pura Vida!
Coffee Break = 6 Birds!
In the post “On the Road” I mentioned that on our way back from Maquenque we stopped for coffee at Cinchona, and even though in the middle of the day, I photographed 6 species of birds while drinking one cup of coffee (10-15 minutes) AND 2 of them were lifers! That’s new birds for me! The new ones were the Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer and the Prong-billed Barbet. Every time I stop there I hope to get a shot of the Red-headed Barbet and after 3 stops, nada! But this time I got his uglier cousin. 🙂 CLICK to enlarge an image.
Prong-billed Barbet 
Siver-throated Tanager 
Blue-gray Tanager 
Black-headed Saltator 
Emerald Toucanet Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer
See my Costa Rica BIRDS Gallery for many more birds!
¡Pura Vida!
Morning Walk in Nature
Walking around my little house is one morning joy I can have any day! As good as up the hill or in a faraway place.
There I feel that nothing can befall me.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
My Flora & Forest Gallery
¡Pura Vida!
Evening Vistas
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk . . . mysteries.”
―
¡Pura Vida!
Green
Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.
~Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Featured Photo: Zoomed in on surrounding hills, Atenas.
“Rainy Season” = “Green Season”
My Galleries: Flora & Forest or Vistas
¡Pura Vida!
May Day Morning Walk
On this cloudy morning I walk up the hill above my house and back at less than an hour with these colorful photos even without sunshine. Nature is everywhere and my favorite way to celebrate “May Day” or May 1.
May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.
May Day Birds
May Day Flowers
May Day Vistas
I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.
~Henry David Thoreau
¡Pura Vida!
Tale of Two Waterfall States
One of my nature loves in both Tennessee and Costa Rica is waterfalls (somewhere just after birds and butterflies!) 🙂 And as I have been updating my photo galleries with a new “Pre-Costa Rica TENNESSEE Photos” gallery I have loaded my photos of all 54 Tennessee state parks plus state natural areas and a few separate independent waterfalls with multiple shots of each waterfall. To bring them all together I created a Tennessee WATERFALLS gallery with just one shot of each of 36 waterfalls I photographed in that state with more shots of each falls in the place galleries.
And you may already be aware of my Costa Rica WATERFALLS gallery with shots of 38 waterfalls I’ve photographed here over the first five+ years. In some ways tropical waterfalls are different but in even more ways they are similar, being in the mountains with usually uphill trails to the falls and then downhill trails to the plunge pools. I guess the type of plants and animals around the falls are the biggest differences. I love waterfalls everywhere and when back to traveling again, Walter is going to take me north of Atenas to some places where I can photograph about 5 more waterfalls. So the gallery will continue to grow! Enjoy! ¡Disfruta!
And oh yes, the featured image is Greeter Falls in the South Cumberland State Park, Tennessee.
“Adopt the pace of nature.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson.
¡Pura Vida!
“It should be difficult to get lost forever.”
Those were the last words emailed to the parents of Cody Roman Dial as he entered the famous and notorious Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula of south-western Costa Rica on the Pacific coast near the Panama border, July 10, 2014.
I am currently about 85% through the Kindle version of this memoir of the loss of Roman Dial’s son Cody Roman Dial here in Costa Rica the same year I moved here, 2014. It all happened in one of the wildest jungles in Central America, the kind with dangers that attract young men like Cody! From snakes & jaguars to illegal gold miners.
The book is The Adventurer’s Son by Roman Dial, the young man’s father, and it starts slow as a childhood biography of Cody helping you to love the adventurous boy as if you were his parent too. Then later he adds as many details as he had of Cody’s solo adventure hike from Mexico City to South America through Central America as an invincible-feeling 27 year old with enormous experience in the wild since his young childhood, most with his parents or sometimes with just the father, who is a lifetime adventurer, explorer, scientists, college professor and part-time explorer for National Geographic. The young man sort of had a reason to feel invincible in the wild. On his trek he climbed the highest mountain in Mexico, used his Spanish language to relate to locals, did an impossible off-trail hike through the jungles of El Peten, Guatemala and boated through the dangerous La Mosquitia Swamp in Honduras before coming to Costa Rica. All of the above were already amazing feats!
Because Corcovado National Park is one of my favorite places in Costa Rica that I have visited 3 times now, I was naturally quite interested in the story and the book.
I will not try to summarize the book or write a full review right now (I’m still reading it), here I give links to public information on the book (the above title link is to the Amazon.com source of the book). Below are three reviews. Plus I have added the reports of the father’s search by our local online newspaper Tico Times and some other news media reports below that. Lastly I have added links to the photo galleries of my three visits to this wilderness national park that took Cody’s life.
BOOK REVIEWS: (1) The Washington Post, (2) Tico Times, (3) Goodreads, (4) My Review on Goodreads, 16 March, added after this post published
SEE ALSO: NPR Interview of Author: A Father Recounts His Search For The Son Who Vanished In Costa Rican Wilderness – There is a short written summary and a 37 minute audio at this link.
Images from News Articles
The True Story in Real Time by News Media
TICO TIMES CHRONOLOGICAL ARTICLES ON CODY ROMAN DIAL:
July 28, 2014 – Search continues in Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park for missing US hiker
July 29, 2014 – Red Cross officials suspect missing hiker may be inside gold mining tunnels
August 4, 2014 – Final search underway for US hiker missing in Corcovado National Park (That is “final” says the CR government agencies.) Not for the father!
August 6, 2014 – Costa Rican gov’t and Red Cross suspend search for US hiker believed missing in Corcovado Nat’l Park
September 17, 2014 – Father of missing hiker hopes to continue search in Panama
May 7, 2016 – Nat Geo mini-series investigates Cody Dial’s disappearance in Corcovado National Park
May 20, 2016 – Human remains in Corcovado could belong to missing US hiker Cody Dial
May 23, 2016 – Missing US hiker Cody Dial’s passport found with human remains in Corcovado National Park
May 27, 2016 – Missing US hiker Cody Dial’s parents submit DNA to investigators
OTHER CHRONOLOGICAL NEWS ARTICLES ON CODY ROMAN DIAL:
May 23, 2016 – outsideonline.com, What Happened to Cody Dial? A New Discovery Raises More Questions
December 20, 2016 – Alaska News, Missing Alaska adventurer was killed by falling tree in Costa Rica, his father says
December 21, 2016 – reddit.com, Mystery Solved!
There are many more stories online about the mysterious disappearance of Cody Roman Dial and and the ultimate conclusion that he was struck by a tree in a storm and killed in the wilderness of Corcovado National Park, hiking off trail which is against the park rules and hiking without an official guide which is also against the park rules. Sometimes rules are for your own good, but a real adventurer doesn’t always think so.
The book and the live news stories are heartbreaking for parents (I empathize because I’ve lost a child), but this story shows the infrequent yet possible dangers in the wilderness that any adventurer knows are possible. I would personally have thought a poisonous snake more likely there, but even the less likely falling tree is possible, especially in the many storms there.
I remember backpacking solo on Fiery Gizzard Trail in TN with fewer dangers but real dangers anyway. Then one day in 2012 on just a day hike there I stumbled and fell on a rocky mountainous trail and was serious hurt requiring stitches in my head. Maybe a life of adventure is always a gamble to some degree, but many real adventurers feel they must continue the gamble! But, like with so many things for me, I tend to be a moderate, wanting adventure but with more caution than many require, especially the young invencibles!
And yes! I will continue to go to Corcovado National Park (see photos of my 3 visits linked below), but always I go with a guide on an official trail, as tame as that may seem to you Cody’s out there! 🙂 I am basically a risk-adverse adventurer! And yes, that is compromising the very meaning of “adventure,” but I’m an old man who is still alive and still having fun! 🙂
My Comparatively Tame Corcovado Adventures
2018-March-13-17–Danta Corcovado — At Los Patos Entrance on above map.
2017 May 1-6 – Drake Bay, Corcovado, Aguila Lodge — At San Pedrillo Entrance on above map
2009 January Birding Tour of Costa Rica — At La Leona Entrance on above map
There are only two other entrances that I have not visited, Sirena & Rio Tigre, but may yet. No planned trips there this year but maybe I go again in 2021. 🙂
“Adventure is worthwhile.” -Aesop
¡Pura Vida!
Hilltop Morning Walk
Margaret, the lady birder from Canada who was in a nearby casita for one month, did most of her birding right here in Roca Verde, including uphill above my casita and on Calle Nueva, the country lane alongside Roca Verde. (She also walked to other neighborhoods in town and had a few trips away, including to Rancho Naturalista & the Tarcoles River.)
But her finding so many birds here got me back into more birding where I live and beyond my own garden where I have no feeders now which has reduced the numbers. Friday morning I spent an hour walking up and down the hill above my house with the result of the following photos of vistas and birds.
Not bad for less than a 200 meter walk from my house! And I know I have already shared similar views and birds on this blog before, but each new time in the viewfinder is a little bit different perspective, a different light, a different pose or action of the bird, and a new joy for me! No new bird species this time, though the immature Blue-black Grassquit was my first immature version of that species! Notice how different she looks from her mother or some other adult female Blue-black Grassquit in photos above. 🙂 I loved the walk and will keep doing it occasionally!
“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” – John Muir
Vistas
Birds
“I love walking because it clears your mind, enriches the soul, takes away stress and opens up your eyes to a whole new world .” – Claudette Dudley
See also Walking Calle Nueva Atenas, the country lane alongside Roca Verde or . . .
Walking Atenas – emphasizing flowers in this small farming town in Central Costa Rica
¡Pura Vida!