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!
Morning Walk in Nature
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!
Highway West Going 4 Lanes!
You spoiled Americans may say, “So what?” but this is a really big deal here in Costa Rica! For years Ruta 3 was the only route from San Jose to the west coast, a narrow, 2-lane, winding mountain road that went right through downtown Atenas (when travelers got to see this charming little town) and then over another set of mountains & one-lane bridges to Puntarenas and Jaco Beaches.
Ten+ years ago they finished an outdated toll road called Ruta 27 from San Jose to Puntarenas with a side branch to Jaco Beaches, much straighter through the mountains but unfortunately most was still just 2 lanes and all the bridges are 2-lane! 🙂 There are 3rd lanes or “passing lanes” on many of the uphill sections to help get around slow trucks, but that is it! Poor planning for the long-term future! See the operator’s video on Ruta 27.
Now it seems the legislature has approved a coming upgrade to widen Ruta 27 to 4 lanes all the way to Puntarenas and Jaco – a huge improvement for those who drive this busy route when it is finally finished, though they are not even starting until 2021! Read all that I know about it on the “Live in Costa Rica Blog” article.
And for those fewer people like me who really like the Atlantic Coast or Caribe as we call it here, you probably know that the widening of Ruta 32 from San Jose to Limon (the flat part beyond the big mountain range) was approved a long time ago and is being widened to 4 lanes right now. It is an easier, quicker job after you get through the mountains of Braulio Carrillo because of the flat land between Guapiles & Limon and I assume they will eventually widen it through the mountains too. Both of these widened routes are important not only for retirees and tourists but especially for commercial trucks delivering goods from our two big shipping ports of Limon & Puntarenas to warehouses in San Jose.
In smaller, poorer countries like Costa Rica this kind of “progress” is slow & expensive, but sure as in this case. I don’t want us to become “too big” or “too developed” but one main highway from coast to coast is a good thing for everyone, though you will sure miss seeing a lot when you zoom by! 🙂 And it passes on the outskirts of Atenas just like the old coast to coast train did in a previous century. 🙂 ¡Así es la vida!
¡Pura Vida!
Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything. ~Charles Kuralt
Country Lane Birds & More!
In an earlier post I introduced you to the little 5 km country lane behind our Roca Verde development and along the stream by that cow pasture in front of my house. It is called Calle Nueva which would be simply “New Street” in English and the 2018 blog post was titled Finishing the country road walk today . . . Then later I added a photo gallery: Walking Calle Nueva Atenas 2018. Same photos!
Yesterday I walked part of the road more slowly than I did with young man Jason Quesada back then. It was with another older person who is a birder from Canada! Totally different! We saw more than 15 species of birds just behind where I live and here are a few photos of some of them! Even got one lifer on this walk of about 2 hours, the Black-crowned Tityra, both male & female! CLICK A PHOTO TO ENLARGE.
And apologies for several washed out pictures with white sky. That was because I was not paying attention to details and accidentally turned the dial to “Manual” without setting the manual settings and wasn’t looking at the images on screen! Ugh! Sloppy old man!
Birds on Calle Nueva
Interesting Flowers on Walk
Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong.
~John Denver
¡Pura Vida!
Bosque Municipal Atenas
Central Park is not the only park in Atenas! We have a sports park in front of the elementary school, a public soccer field separately down the street and a public swimming pool! I have shown much of the sports park and mentioned the others, but the most important one for me is one I had never entered until today – Bosque Municipal Atenas – Atenas Municipal Forest.
My friend from British Columbia wanted to go and I always have, so we went together to our “nature park” or forest for birds this morning. It is five miles west on Ruta 3 at Vista Linda or the edge of Barrio Jesus, on the right-hand side of the highway with multiple signs and two entrances. The main entrance is near the second sign or further up the mountain at the big community soccer field across the highway from Vista Linda Restaurant & Bar. Just walk around to the other side of the soccer field. Our first taxi driver knew nothing about it but was glad for the $13 one-way taxi drive! 🙂 The taxi that picked us up was very familiar with it, meaning that some people are into nature and others are not! 🙂
Well, we went for birds, especially the Long-tailed Manakin that definitely lives there and we heard their songs many times (toledo, toledo, toledo) but never was close enough to one for a photo. In fact the above Keel-billed Toucan is the only decent bird photo I got with efforts at some tiny birds and a blurry Woodcreeper. Maybe next time! 🙂 BUT, we saw lots of butterflies and below are 5 species I got shots of, some are new species for me.
5 Butterfly Species
Trail-head Signs
I did not get shots of the two highway signs – sorry!
See my Butterfly Gallery (nearly 100 species!) or other parts of Atenas in my Atenas Gallery. Or just go for ALL! 🙂
And though I didn’t photograph any here, I have a gallery of my Long-tailed Manakin shots.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. ~Henry David Thoreau
¡Pura Vida!