The two most numerous wildlife at Villa Lapas this first afternoon in my camera were iguanas and dragonflies and I decided to share photos of 2 of the many dragonflies on the water lily pond in front of their colonial chapel in the jungle village across from my room. I left my dragonflies book at home, so no IDs on these yet! 🙂
Unidentified Dragonfly, Villa Lapas, Tarcoles, Puntarenas, Costa RicaUnidentified Dragonfly, Villa Lapas, Tarcoles, Puntarenas, Costa Rica
In the morning I do their “Early Bird Walk” before breakfast and their“Sky Way Tour” after breakfast. Then tomorrow night I do their“Night Walk” and hope for a good frog photo! So I should know tomorrow if I like the “new” Villa Lapas (changed a lot in 9 years). The afternoons are too hot & humid here (closer to coast) to do much of anything! Finally, Wednesday morning I’ve decided I will do their “Jungle River Wagon Tour” to get the whole picture of this changing resort and then I will go home after that and give you my final evaluation later. 🙂
It’s fun to “REDISCOVER” what you already have! A new collection of photo galleries has been created in my big main gallery, to display butterfly photos I made in other countries before moving to Costa Rica, especially during my last 10 years in the USA, where I found that I had old photos for 64 species! Not as many in other countries visited, particularly since I was not focused on butterflies back then! 🙂 There is a main “folder” Gallery for “other countries” with country galleries in that or in the case of the U.S., another folder with Taxonomy Family folders for a lot more butterflies! These new galleries are organized as follows . . .
This past Saturday I went on a van with a group from the Art House Atenas to visit two art museums in San Jose (and there are many more!). The first was the National Museum of Costa Rican Art where all the exhibits are rotating except for the statue garden. Then after a lunch in the city, we visited the world-famous Jade Museum in San Jose which of course has a lot of jade carvings, but is more about Pre-Columbian Art and culture.
I have a gallery completed of photos of some of the art with my cell phone camera which is allowed in both museum as long as you don’t use a flash. The feature photo is from the “Dark Valley” exhibit by Costa Rican Adrián Arguedas Ruano, mostly of traditional uses of masks here in the earlier indigenous cultures, though my favorite CR exhibit was “Dream World” by Costa Rican Flora Sáenz Langlois with her nature paintings of what she calls her “Magical Forests”(one below). And my favorite things in the Jade were the pottery or ceramic work and the human indigenous panoramas of pre-Columbian life.
I’ve seen both museums in the past, but there is always something new and enjoyable about any museum visit! 🙂
One of the “Magical Forest” paintings by Langlois at the National Costa Rican Art Museum.
See more photos in the gallery: 2024 Jan 17 – Two Museums or there are 3 more shots below as samples . . .
It took longer after this trip to put the gallery together with a lengthy flurry of activities and first of year requirements, but my Christmas Trip of 2023 December 22-28 — San Gerardo de Dota, Hotel Savegre is ready to visit with all my birds, other wildlife, flowers and landscapes ready to view!
That’s right! I’m back to sharing photos from my Christmas Trip to Hotel Savegre in San Gerardo de Dota. I think I shared some shots of the grounds and a “broad look at the gardens” which are some of the best of any hotel in Costa Rica. Well now that I’m not as super-busy as I have been since Christmas, I’m going to finish the gallery for the Christmas Trip to Hotel Savegre! And this posts introduces the sub-gallery called: Savegre Individual Flowers where I just deposited 57 photos of individual flowers! And here is one of my favorite . . .
Dancing Dolls or Fuchsia at Hotel Savegre, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica. CLICK IMAGE for more!
Local hikes this December-January 2023-24 with a birding friend from British Columbia . . . Here’s a linked small gallery for each, represented with one photo from each and the linked date & place headings (or the photo) to go to that gallery . . .
Google sent me this map showing everywhere I went in 2023 and that motivated me to make a little travel map for my planned 5 trips in 2024, which again is a slight decrease from the previous year as I slow down a little – but not too much! :-) I really need to get to different parts of Costa Rica to maintain a variety in my nature photos! Though all of these 5 lodges for 2024 are favorites I’ve visited before, they are all good and will yield a lot of photos! :-)
I make many of my reservations nearly a year in advance because of the popularity of most of these and they fill up fast! (Especially Christmas Week!) One example is that I tried to get in Selva Verde Lodge Sarapiqui in March and there was no vacancy! But I’m glad I will go back to Villa Lapas near me instead, while it is still locally operated, because in the next year or so it will become a Marriott and thus much more expensive and who knows if it will be better or worse? It is next door to Carara NP and the Tarcoles Crocodile Safari Boat tours that I like and they have now added a jungle tree top bridge and other activities, along with their pretty good birding reserve. We will see what happens in the future with Marriott. :-)
2023 Travels
Including local obviously and the 4 points on the Caribbean side are one trip that include separate flags for 2 national parks, the airport & the hotel. And the 6 flags in the north represent 4 trips. :-)
My Google Travel Map for 2023 above.
2024 Planned Trips
My planned 5 trips away from Atenas for 2024 in the order scheduled.
Somehow I missed scheduling Corcovado, Osa Peninsula or the South Pacific this year, but that puts it at the top of the list for 2025! :-) And to see what my trips and places are like, visit my Costa Rica TRIPS Galleries. If you are planning on a trip to Costa Rica, you can tell a lot about some of these lodges and parks by the photos I post there for each trip.
No big surprise for those of us who live here, but Costa Rica was named as the #1 Travel Destination for 2024 by Travel & Leisure Magazine AND the International Living Magazine and organization simultaneously named Costa Rica as the #1 Best Place to Retire in 2024! Read about it inTravel & Leisure. Or on International Living website.
View from my cabin at Playa Cativo Lodge, Piedras Blancas NP, Costa Rica. And feature photo is a Keel-billed Toucan in my garden in Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
For someone who made what a few American friends back in Nashville thought was a radical or crazy decision to move here in 2014, these announcements confirm the good decision I made back then! :-)
And these rankings are a good celebration of my 9 years of living in Costa Rica (as of December 24, 2023 — 2+ weeks ago). And my survival of cancer a celebration of the excellent healthcare here! Plus there is no better place for a nature lover and nature photographer like me! Tell your nature-lover friends to follow my blog to see what it is like to be “Retired in Costa Rica!” :-)
Yesterday was the last morning birding hike with my friend from British Columbia and Walter took us to a new nature reserve for me, Reserva Madre Verde near Palmares which is north of Atenas, a 30 minute drive through beautiful mountains (or maybe hills). :-)
Our two hour hike up & down a hill had a 300 meter rise in altitude was good for us 80-somethings! We heard lots of birds but in a fairly thick forest we did not see as many as the other two birding hikes. I got photos of only 3 birds – BUT – I’m still happy because I got photos of 9 different species of butterflies, which took me all afternoon to identify and process the photos AND I got 3 new species for me! :-) So a very good 2-hour hike! Below is a gallery with one shot of each of the 9 butterflies after this one shot for the email version of post . . .
Just one photo that is linked to my Trip Gallery Grounds & Gardens Sub-Gallery with more photos and then in a few days I will share some really beautiful flowers, but this week has become overwhelming and I will be a few days later processing my flower photos with a guest from Canada here, medical lab work tomorrow at the National Hospital de Geriatria in San Jose, a trip to a new nature reserve for me Thursday with my Canadian friend and removing all my stuff from the Galería on Saturday. A really full week! But I see tranquility in next week! :-)
Just one corner of many gardens! CLICK IMAGE for more photos.
