Well . . . my goal for today was to photograph a toucan and a macaw. Goal accomplished! Plus some other colorful creatures before, during an after breakfast, with several butterflies included and a most interesting blue-winged insect on my breakfast table! Remember, nearly all restaurants in Costa Rica are alfresco! Enjoy my photos from Villa Caletas today.
It was raining the whole evening – all of these photos made in a light rain and that may partly account for the changing colors. Sunset at Villa Caletas.
If you are in a beautiful place where you can enjoy sunrise and sunset, then you are living like a lord.
Villa Caletas is an older hotel and old-style upscale, old-style architecture, and old-style service with big staff, lots of young people anxious to wait on you. So far I like it even though the trail down the mountain is closed because of rainy season damage. It was raining when I got here and has rained most of the time, which I thought meant no sunset, but boy was I surprised! It’s late & I’m tired, so I will post the sunset photos tomorrow. Here’s my first impressions of the hotel in photos without photos of the toucans and macaws flying around when I didn’t have my big camera out. All of these are cell phone photos:
Most of my trips within Costa Rica are in search of more birds! And most give me at least one new species. But I also love photographing other nature, vistas, waterfalls, and of course Sunrises & Sunsets!
Multiple expat friends here have told me that the best sunset vistas and photos are from the restaurant & theater at a hotel on a hill near Jaco, just an hour away, Hotel Villa Caletas. It is upscale or expensive, so only 4 nights which is not as long as I prefer to stay to really see a place, but that will still be 4 sunset opportunities, Sunday-Wednesday nights, weather cooperating. I’ve had more than one sunset rained out or covered by clouds, but that’s part of the adventure!
Villa Caletas is different from the nature lodges I usually visit, but still immersed in nature with hotel birding trails and a jungle trail down the mountain to their beach with shuttle rides back up the hill. It is close to Punta Leona which had very good birding and also close to the Carara National Park (good birding) which I may or may not visit again – been there 4 time now! Just going to take it day by day after I get there. A serendipity trip!
I think I already have some pretty nice sunset photos in my gallery called VISTAS, BEACHES, SUNRISES, SUNSETS CR . The featured image above is one of mine of a sunrise on the Caribbean side which I like to use because so many people here think everything is better on the Pacific side – well, maybe just more expensive! 🙂 And most can’t see a difference in sunrise or sunset.
What I get at Villa Caletas will go in the Pacific Sub Gallery of the above linked sunset gallery and then we can compare to see if they really have the best sunsets on the Pacific coast! 🙂 My favorite on the Pacific so far is the one I took from a Sansa Airplane (on return from Danta Corcovado). And they weren’t too bad from a hillside hotel in Manuel Antonio last Christmas! Yep! I love sunsets!
While the Atlantic or Caribbean side is mostly for sunrises, I have been pretty lucky over there too! (Where I go again the end of this August.) You just have to get up earlier to see sunrises! Yawn! 🙂
And to be fair to Villa Caletas, here is one of their website photos of their sunset which is very nice! Hope mine will be as good or better! 🙂
Sunset photo from Villa Caletas online. — Not my photo.
¡Pura Vida!
When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
“Guarumo” is the Spanish name Ticos call a Cecropia Tree (English name) and about 4 years ago I asked my gardeners to plant one in my front yard because I had heard that they attract toucans for the easy perches and the food of the flowers. I would be patient, not really knowing how fast they grow!
In just 4 years it is the tallest tree in my yard, more than twice the height of my little house and my favorite “Bird Gallery”or place for birds to land so I can photograph them because it is such an open tree with a limited number of large leaves. See in the tree photos below what it looked like when we planted it and how big it has grown.
No telling how many birds I miss that land in the top of the tree! 🙂 But the lower limbs are what I watch while eating breakfast every morning and where I photographed from my terrace the birds in the birds photos below, including two kinds of toucans! I love nature’s gallery of birds that helps me grow my own photo gallery of birds! ¡Pura Vida!
Birds in Tree
CLICK photo to enlarge or start manual slideshow.
Clay-colored Thrush
Yellow-bellied Elaenia
Rufous-naped Wren
Keel-billed Toucan
Gartered Trogon
White-winged Dove
Fiery-billed Aracari
Squirrel Cuckoo
Gray-headed Caracara
Palm Tanager
Fiery-billed Aracari
Gray-headed Caracara
Melodious Blackbird
Yellow Warbler
Fiery-billed Aracari
Rufous-naped Wren
Montezuma Oropendola
Great Kiskadee
The Tree
CLICK photo to enlarge or start manual slideshow.
Gardener Trims Limbs from House
Easy to See & Photograph Birds
The Tallest Tree at End of House
Top When First Planted
A Skinny Little Tree When Planted
Open Limbs, Few Leaves
“Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish.”
I have not been having many interesting or colorful birds at breakfast for awhile, with many rufous-naped wrens & clay-colored thrush! And it seems like maybe a year since I’ve seen one of the Blue-crowned Motmots now renamed to be Lesson’s Motmot (wish they wouldn’t do that!). But yesterday at breakfast, early for me, about 6:20-6:30 I had a motmot visit. This one Lesson’s Motmot flew into the Nance Tree looking for Nance Berries I assume, staying there 3 or 4 minutes, occasionally flying to the ground and briefly foraging, maybe for fallen berries or an insect. Then he was gone. If I spent more time on my terrace I would undoubtedly see more birds! i.e. Two different neighbors have seen Crested Caracaras in the cow pasture in front of my house and I haven’t. Too much time on my computer?! 🙂 Well, I focus more on birds on my monthly trip and that is when I photograph the most. But it is nice to know that I still have a large variety of birds near my house!
Lesson’s Motmot
Lesson’s Motmot
Lesson’s Motmot
Lesson’s Motmot
Lesson’s Motmot
Note that this one has both pendants on the end of his tail which is almost unusual now as most seem to catch then on a tree or something and tear one or both off as you can see in my gallery.
See some of my other Lesson’s Motmotsphotos (better photos!) as a sub gallery of my bigger Costa Rica Birds Gallery where you can find other sub galleries for 3 other types of motmots:
These 3 can be seen in the right parts of Costa Rica, though the Lesson’s is most common and most widely distributed and favors the Pacific side of CR.
“Wake up with the birds and go to sleep with the stars.”
― Marty Rubin
This morning a quick walk through my garden gave me photos of these four butterflies plus I kept seeing a bright yellow one (probably one of the Sulphurs) who would never slow down enough for a photo. But here’s the four I got (CLICK to see larger):
Giant Swallowtail
Cloudless Sulphur (pale)
Southern Broken Dash Skipper
Giant White
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
Yeah, I have these Black Witch Moths visit my house almost every year and you can see at least 4 others in my Butterfly & Moth Gallery, found alphabetically as “Black Witch Moth.” And I obviously don’t believe the Latin Folklore that the appearance of one means death is coming to that house soon.
This one was on my bathroom wall at the ceiling last night and gone by this morning. To the naked eye it is very dark as this photo on my Canon SLR without a flash shows (only bathroom ceiling light on in the night). In February I shot one on my brown shower curtain with my cell phone and flash and if you go to that link you will see how much more colorful they are with more light or in the gallery there is also one with the Canon using the flash. Big difference! As light always brings!
As one visitor to my house said “I always see something scurrying away when I turn on the light during the night.” Well, living with strange wildlife is not for everyone, but I find it quite interesting and kind of fun when one is named a “Witch!” 🙂 Why, it even calls for a Halloween Cartoon I think:
Because it was a special week, I’m doing a second book on Xandari where I celebrated my birthday last week. It was such a colorful week, I titled it “Brilliant!”Follow the link to a free online preview of the book showing 82 of my photos. Or click this smaller image of the book cover below:
