 |
| The sun sets behind trees and power lines but still colorful and varied! |
 |
| Seen from end of balcony and all three windows on the west side. |
 |
| Looking northwest toward downtown Atenas |
 |
| And back to the west with trees included in this image |
Toucans and a Garden!
 |
| Three houses over after flying over mine – in lower right. Sorry it is small. |
 |
| A Pair or a Mother-Child |
 |
| One big flap of his wings and he glides like a bullet! |
KEEL-BILLED TOUCANS
This was the second of two big excitements today. I sat down on the love seat to catch my breath this afternoon after spending two hours with some gardeners which I’ll tell you about in a second. But I looked out my living room window at the big Strangler Fig tree in my yard and saw a Keel-billed Toucan in it, just his big beak showing. I quietly go get the camera and of course he was gone when I returned, evidently to a tree across the road. Then he flew (above photo) to some distant neighbors where I tried to photograph him and others in some trees there. Some day I’ll get one up closer. But this is the kind of things I see from my deck. And I’m not on vacation! I live here!
GARDEN DESIGNED TODAY
I have watched the neighbor couple my age from Oregon work so hard on planting a garden and knew there had to be an easier way. Well an advertisement went up in our development last week for a landscape company saying they will design and install gardens as well as maintain them and ask for Cristian if you need an English-speaker. I emailed him this morning with photos (below) of the empty corner at the end of my driveway by the entry patio. And scanned my drawing showing the dimensions in meters of course.
I figured I would hear back in a week or so. In less than an hour, as I was preparing lunch, he called and said he was in Roca Verde now working on another house and could come over and look at 2:30. He did with two workers. I explained what I wanted in general and he took notes and explained that I couldn’t have the palm I wanted in this space because of the septic tank and the palm’s long roots, but he promised to provide something against the stark concrete wall and make a garden that I would love with flowers year-around, as well as many butterflies and hummingbirds. I’m so excited! I’d much rather spend a little money like this than a lot on a car!
I ended up getting a Palma Roja at the end of my back sidewalk at the other back corner of the house, expanding my garden visually. I can’t remember all the flower names now that they will install including vines to hang down on the stark concrete wall. Then we went around front and I ordered two pot plants for my deck and one for the living room. The total cost is less than what I would pay for just the plants in the states, AND it includes top soil brought in, three big pots planted, and all the installation labor. And they come install it this Friday! Here’s what the space looks like now, my “before photos”:
 |
| Seen from the driveway looking toward the entry plaza. I mostly use the sliding glass door on deck for my entry mostly. |
 |
| The entry patio leading to an entry hall with bath & bedroom to left and kitchen, office, living/dining room and deck to right. |
Of course Friday will be the new, young plants with not as much to showoff yet. But rainy season is starting and by August I think it will be looking good and in another year great! I’m planning to stay here long term! The beach is too hot and too expensive to live at and I’m less than two hours from it anyway! Plus I really like Atenas! My new home!
First Vistas
 |
| First view is toward downtown Atenas and mountain range. Trees on right are neighbor yards. |
The vista from La Jacaranda was of the close hills of Atenas where this is more expansive, looking over Atenas to the mountain ranges that include Poas and Arenal Volcanoes. So it is quite different. If I walk up to the top of my hill in my landlord’s yard I can see downtown Atenas and the church steeple at Central Park and the mountains to the west (same if I walk up the road in front of my house – photo below).
 |
| View from about one block up the road from my house with sunshine. The Central Park church steeple is on the left. Amazing difference 50 to 100 feet makes! But they pay for these views! Yet I can walk up there anytime to look or photograph! 🙂 |
My view to the west for sunsets is from the end of the balcony on the left in top photo. You look through trees and power lines, thus no wide view of the sunset. Same from both bedrooms. I’ll show some shots of that tomorrow.
That road you see bottom center in front of my house (1st & 3rd photos) is heading straight toward downtown Atenas, where I walk daily. It is just one mile from my house to Central Park and 1.2 to the supermarket I use most often, the Cooperative. Maxi Pali, the other supermarket, is about 1.6 miles I’m guessing, 2 miles at most. I haven’t measured it yet.
I just made a new shot from my balcony right after the afternoon shower which is not as expansive as the 2-pix panorama at top but what I see in one direction:
 |
| As the afternoon shower stops, looking northwest from my balcony. I live in the foothills of the mountains, a dream life! |
Unprepared for First Rain
 |
| Yellow Bells Trees Shedding Blooms Sunny Sidewalk in Atenas |
I walk in the sunshine under the Yellow Bell trees for a late lunch and early dinner out to try the ribs at the Don Yayo Chicharonerra Cafe. Beautiful day with some rain clouds in the sky like we’ve had for weeks with no rain, so of course it will not rain. Well, while eating we got our first rain of the year (not counting one little shower) and it was a “gully washer” as we would say back in Arkansas. I took a photo but rain doesn’t seem to show up in my photos. The streams and canyons were gushing as I walked home.
We were very dry and having grass fires, so we really needed the rain! But it was so unexpected that I left my apartment windows open AND my laundry drying out on the balcony! Guess what? Some floors got mopped and my clothes went back through the spin cycle with hopefully some sun tomorrow. This is a case for the electric dryer in my new house and almost reason enough by itself for the move! 🙂 Can hardly wait!
Then after clean up of the rain, I got this “After the Rain” photo of rain fog on the horizon. Hope I get as many photo ops from the new balcony! I just love nature, even in the middle of a town.
 |
| “After the Rain” from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica |
Ripening Mangoes & Coffee Research
The most eaten fruit in the world!
 |
| This tree has red or purple ones, while some are turning yellow or orange. Shot from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica |
One website lists 4 different cultivars of mangoes in Costa Rica:
- Costa Rica: Haden, Irwin, Keitt, Tommy Atkins (click name for description)
I believe my photo above is of the Tommy Atkins variety (purple). On the property here (formerly a mango farm) there is at least one other variety or cultivar. It is turning yellow & orange which I think is the Hayden. A lot of the different varieties were developed in Florida, trying to create year around crops.
This Ojochal blog declares Mango “King of the Fruit World” listing health benefits and describing the 4 cultivars.
Nature’s Pride (a distributor) has lots of recipes and some “How to Prepare” videos
This “Fruit of the Month” article has a couple of mango recipes.
I have been eating a mango a day recently and keep a bottle of mango pulp in the frig for making one of four smoothie-type fruit drinks I have at least one of every day: mango, guanabana, mora (blackberry), and pina (pineapple). The mangoes that fall from the trees are bruised on one side and I cut that side off before eating the rest of it. I can get better ones in the market that aren’t bruised but were picked ripe or near-ripe. There is nothing better than a tree-ripened mango! I said the same thing when I lived in The Gambia.
And by the way – I signed the contract on the rental house Tuesday. Move a week from Thursday, 23 April. The virtual tour of my new house is still on the Realtor’s site for now. It will be taken down eventually.
And for you STARBUCKS COFFEE LOVERS: Starbucks Costa Rica Coffee Research Farm is
supposedly trying to help coffee growers raise disease-resistant coffee plants IF they will sell to Starbucks at ridiculously low prices – American ingenuity or greed? Coffee farmers have to eat too!
Caring for Nature
 |
| Celebrate Your Life Care for Nature |
I recently noticed this sign nailed to a tree in Central Park Atenas below some air plants. Costa Ricans are known for celebrating and enjoying life! And the country is a haven for nature unlike most others. Maybe someone put this sign here to educate the youth who hang out in the park a lot, since many of them are more interested in things than nature. As a nature-lover I’m glad to see it anyway.
The government and tourism leadership are working to make Costa Rica one of the “greenest” tourist countries in the world. Maybe now they will work harder on educating the local people concerning littering and misuse of things like the greywater I wrote about earlier. There is not much they can do about volcanic ash, but at least it is fairly rare with some volcanoes erupting only every 400 years. All of these little environmental concerns are important because together with the daily destruction of forests by man’s hunger for wood, land, and “progress,” we are systematically destroying the world that God made for us. The “care for nature” is still minimal in our world, even in Costa Rica. May we all celebrate life by caring for nature!
Now this good news as it was reported in “Costa Rica Insider” one of the newsletters I get:
100% renewable energy
More exciting news recently out of Costa Rica. The country’s electric utility company, ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad) announced that during the first 75 days of 2015, the country had been running completely on renewable energy resources—with no burning of fossil fuels needed to generate electricity. The primary source is hydroelectric (Lake Arenal was actually created to power a hydroelectric plant), followed by geothermal (all that volcanic activity underground comes in handy), wind, and a good bit of solar, too.
Costa Rica has set an ambitious goal of being completely carbon neutral for its power generation by 2021. And it already generates more than 90% of its power on average through renewable sources.
Ticos and expats are psyched. And the achievement has also attracted attention from environmental watchers and media organizations from around the world.
“We cannot think too highly of nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.”
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832)
“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”
― Chris Maser, Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest
Cashew Fruit
 |
| Cashew Fruit is ripening on trees around Atenas now. Photographed from my balcony, Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica |
This shot was made from about 50 meters away on a tree in a neighbor’s yard, shot from my balcony! The fruit reminds you of a red or yellow (come in both colors) bell pepper except for the seed or nut that hangs below it. Only one nut per fruit. No wonder cashews are somewhat expensive. Read about them in this Wikipedia article. New uses for the fruit itself are being developed, including one by Pepsi Cola. It is not a major export from Costa Rica. They grow in most tropical climes and we even had them in The Gambia. Most of what you get in the states probably come from India, Indonesia or Nigeria, where they are big exports. We stick with exporting bananas, pineapples, and coffee here!
Quiet Evening
I walked down to the river to see if I could find a bird to photograph and couldn’t, so a little shot of the stream running along the southern border of our property.
 |
| Rio Cajon just above the waterfall, 5:00 PM Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica |
 |
| I did capture this Red-billed Pigeon in flight yesterday, though not good focus Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica |
 |
| And tonight’s sunset clouds make a giant in the sky! Hacienda La Jacaranda, Atenas, Costa Rica |
We are now harvesting the first mangos from our property trees – hope they will be good!
Alajuela & La Garita
 |
| Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría, Alajuela, Costa Rica Kevin’s kind of museum! And a country without an army finds all forts to be historical! This is across from the central plaza. |
 |
| Alajuela Plaza Cathedral |
 |
| Church of the Agony, Alajuela |
 |
| We stop in La Garita at a plant nursery called a Vivero in Costa Rica |
 |
| Kevin enjoyed shooting flowers there |
We also tried to find a sugar cane mill we had passed earlier in the week, but failed to get on the right country road. So missed that photo op!
Manuel Antonio National Park
 |
| Baby Green Parrot Snake in the Pacific coastal rainforest of Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica Shot with cell phone through a spotting scope |
 |
| Three-toed Sloth Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica Shot with cell phone through a spotting scope |
 |
| Glass Frog Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica Shot with cell phone through a spotting scope |
 |
| Rare and elusive Squirrel Monkey Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica Shot with my Canon Rebel, 75-300 mm lens |
 |
| A People-Watching White-faced Capuchin Monkey Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica Shot with my Canon Rebel, 75-300 mm lens |
 |
| Sunset from El Avion Restaurant Manual Antonio, Costa Rica Cell Phone photo |
We spent the morning on a guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park with a guide who had a spotting scope making some of these photos possible. The web connection is still slow, but I was more patient today uploading these 5 photos, though it took about an hour. Only a couple of birds today, but a lot of birds yesterday which I will show some of after back home in Atenas with a faster internet. We are tried a different approach to the sunset tonight by eating in a restaurant overlooking the ocean. Not as good as last night, but we accomplished dinner at the same time!
Quepos and Manuel Antonio towns are like Gatlinburg, horrible tourist traps next to a wonderful National Park like Gatlinburg with the Smoky Mountain National Park. Our older, simple hotel is nice and right on the beach unlike most. They have no restaurant, but there is one next door serving all three meals. We had lunch in a nice restaurant near the park today and tonight’s in an old airplane, El Avion, which overlooks the beach and ocean. Different!