Bird of Paradise Flower(Wikipedia link). It’s another of the many flowers in the hotel garden and this one was not included in my first flower post from here. Though they can grow in gardens here, I rarely see them. Some have one small plant in a pot (like at Xandari), but this hotel has a flower bed full of them with many blooming right now. First time I’ve seen this many together. Another plus for this hotel.
Bird of Paradise Flower, Best Western Plus, San Jose, Costa Rica
And finally, Rainy Season has started in the Central Valley, first week of May like normal. You may remember that I thought it was starting early this year with multiple rains the first week of April, but that was a false start with little more until now! 🙂 “Rainy Season” (May to November) is also called “Green Season” here and it is my favorite time of year, plus fewer tourists, since northerners like to come when it is cold & snowy up north and is the “Dry Season” here (December-April). See more flowers in my Flora & Forest Galleries.
Looking out of my living room front window during a hard rain today (so glad rainy season is here!), the big tree is a Strangler Fig Tree with an unknown smaller one beside it plus a strangled one and then on this side is the tall, skinny Ylang-ylang Tree still growing up through the canopy of the larger trees. And all much wetter than the photo shows! 🙂 See also my May 11 “Rain Trees” post for a different look at wet trees! 🙂
My Front Window View in the Rain with the street a temporary river! 🙂
Of course it was right after I watered my gardens that the big downburst of rain came and just kept raining like one of those good rainy season afternoon showers. Yeah, we were hoping the same with our March 22 rain but it was not this big of a thundershower and didn’t have the Pacific Ocean storms we’re having now. I checked the Accuweather long-range forecast and, if accurate, we are beginning rainy season early (most typically it starts in May). It is also called “The Green Season” and is my favorite time of year!
Except for rain pounding down on the driveway, I haven’t been able to photograph rain around my house so it shows up very well in the pix, but here’s two from past trips that show up a little better. That one from Selva Verde (feature photo at top online) shows rain pouring off the roof of my cabin by the river, while my house here in Atenas has gutters all the way around, thus never having that same effect.
Seen from the Restaurant on the Corobici River, Guanacaste.
Seen from my Cabin at Selva Verde Lodge, Sarapiqui.
I Feel Most At Peace When It Is Raining For It Reminds Me That The Sky Is Alive.
Is it a freak “Dry Season” once-off rain or a very early starting of the “Rainy Season” this year? We will see! The Jigüirro or Clay-colored Thrush (CR National Bird) has been singing his heart out recently and indigenous tradition is that they are the ones who “sing in the rain!”
It is generally said for the Central Valley (where I live) that Rainy Season is May-November and Dry Season December-April. My first few years here we did not see our first rain until mid to late April and not a lot until May. Last year the first rain was March 24 and this year now March 22, so is it starting early? Almost certainly not daily afternoon showers now (usually by May) but at least I do not need to water the garden for a few more days! 🙂
Always Trying to Capture Rain in a Photo!
And never very good at it! 🙂 The featured photo at top shows the dark cloud this afternoon shower came from and some of us hope it will be regular now (though very early)!
First Darkness – Then Rain!
The first drops on an Elephant Ear plant.
Vertical white lines are blurred rain drops.
Vertical white lines are blurred rain drops.
Raindrops bouncing off driveway.
I’ve always preferred the rainy season because it is greener with fresher air and the wind quits blowing! And most of the time we get rain only for an hour or two in the afternoon. Lowland rainforests along both coasts get more rain than we do here and it can be year-around, especially South Pacific and South Caribbean. For more weather information, check out your favorite weather channel or these websites:
And to let you know that this first rain is a real rain, since it started I have loaded and processed the photos to web-size, prepared and written this blog post, all in an hour or a little more AND IT IS STILL RAINING – HARD! 🙂 Love it! The tropics! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
And my first afternoon walk was cut short because the clouds literally moved in as shown in earlier post with a sort of mist, not exactly rain, but my camera was getting wet and time to go in! 🙂 See all 8 photos from the walk . . .
This afternoon the clouds slowly moved in until I was in a mist it seemed.
El Silencio Lodge and the nearby pueblo of Bajos del Toro are in the Cloud Forest in mountains much higher than where I live in Atenas though not as high as my January visit to San Gerardo de Dota – but still the clouds move in sometime as they did this afternoon after my arrival and during my first walk around the property.
A Dakar, Senegal Mosque Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean — Photographed while in The Gambia & Senegal, 1999-2002.
A few readers know or remember that I once live in The Gambia, West Africa for three years with many experiences recorded on this same website found by following my AFRICA Travel Page links or going directly to pages for The Gambia and Senegal. I made both of the above photos in Dakar, Senegal.
I got one of my first shocks the first month there when I told the guards that it looked like a rain storm was coming from the north, even though it was “The Dry Season.” They laughed at me and explained that the first month of dry season was called Harmattan and was when the sand and dust from the Sahara Desert blew south and west and that we would soon be covered in dust and sand, thus close your windows. I closed them and it did not help much with everything in the little apartment covered in dust or sand. Incidentally, some years that same Harmattan blows part of the Sahara Desert all the way across the Atlantic to Costa Rica. Really! 🙂
In Costa Rica it is not called “Harmattan,” but we have a similar experience any time from late December to mid-March when the wind blows almost constantly and everything is dusty. It is not as heavy as West Africa, but it is for a longer period of time with just dust, not desert sand (usually)! It is worse if one of the volcanoes is erupting and we get the gray to black volcano soot like I’ve had a few times from Volcán Turrialba. 🙂
Thus when another WordPress Blogger posted this Poem by Danusha Lameris, I saved it to share right now during our “mini-harmattan” or windy weather or dusty season, none of which are titles Costa Rica brags about for our “Dry Season” (most popular tourist time). And incidentally, this years winds seem to be stronger and at night much cooler than the previous 6 Dry Seasons for me here. Now North Americans wouldn’t consider the low 60’s Fahrenheit cold, but that’s a “two-blanket night” here! 🙂
Here’s a few views of the big lake below Arenal Volcano. There is a boat taxi that will take you across the lake to a car taxi that will take you up that mountain to Monteverde. The lake is also a favorite for local fishermen. My May 2018 trip here gave me better sunset photos of the lake – time of year does make a difference!
For most people it would be a horrible day with almost constant rain, but my all morning birding hike with breakfast break was good for me including this one “Lifer” or first-time seen bird.
I still don’t have a count of how many birds I photographed in the terrible light, but I will report on that tomorrow. Nestor says he saw or heard 82 species and I’m sure I didn’t see half that number, but will tell tomorrow. The selfie here is me with Nestor, my guide.
This Bicolored Antbird is my first to see or photograph and my second Lifer on this trip. Learn more about him at the eBird Description. CLICK below images to enlarge:
My birding hikes are not until tomorrow, so these 20 species I got on my own and wanted to get them out before what I hope will be some new or different birds with Guide Nestor whom I’ve had on both of my previous trips here. He is good! They always ask if you have any target birds for the hike and I will tell him the same thing I did last year, “Yes, the Umbrella Bird and the Yellow-eared Toucanet.” These are both fairly rare birds and difficult to find in the thick forest and I want to add them to my collection. 🙂 But I won’t get my hopes up!
I just hope we don’t have rain tomorrow morning like we have had most of today. Here we are on the Caribbean Slope which tends to have more rain than the Pacific slope where I live. But it is still the beginning of the dry season here with less rain than they’ve had the last 6 months. We will bird from 6-8 AM, have breakfast, then the rest of the morning. So I’m hopeful with a half day with a birding guide I will get lots of birds!
Now a slide show of the last 24 hours of birds on my own with two shots of Scarlet-rumped Tanager because the male and female are totally different and two of the Brown Jay with one flying and the other perched; 22 shots of 20 species including my “lifer” I introduced yesterday:
