Category: Travel

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Experiencing Nature

My newest photo book is my cheapest ($8.83), smallest ( 6×9 in, 15×23 cm) and shortest (30 pages) as an introduction to why I retired in Costa Rica with 47 photos demonstrating my nature photography here. It’s not exactly a portfolio because of the cheaper paper, but . . . it actually is a cheaper version of a portfolio 🙂 and it also describes the 5 ways I experience nature and share it. As with all my books there is a FREE PREVIEW electronically of all pages in the bookstore at:

https://www.blurb.com/b/10782574-experiencing-nature-retired-in-costa-rica

Or click the front cover image below:

My Newest Book

This will become my “give-away” book to guides, lodges and others here in Costa Rica, since some of my other books are too expensive to keep giving them away as I have been. But I’m still not in the photo-selling or book-selling business. I’m retired! 🙂 I make my photos to share with others online and the books become ways to do that physically on occasions. Prints and wall art are available in my gallery with no profit for me, just a good service of (and profit for) my gallery host. 🙂

And while you’re in my bookstore, check out some of my other photo books! They have free previews too!

🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Butterfly & Holiday/Health Report

Like me recovering from cancer and the just-as-bad cancer treatment, this pitiful-looking damaged butterfly is still flying and eating! 🙂 He is a Ilus swallowtail or Dual-spotted swallowtail, Mimoides ilus (Wikipedia link) and note that it is very similar to another butterfly that I originally labeled this as, the Emerald-patched Cattleheart. The main difference is the Cattleheart has emerald or light-green spots on the upper wings instead of white as this Swallowtail has. (And by the way, Cattlehearts are in the Swallowtail family!) See my Dual-spotted Swallowtail Gallery or all of my CR Butterflies. Note that in the additional photos below this feature image there is one of a non-damaged Dual-spotted that got in my house on the window screen before I opened it and let him fly out.

Damaged Dual-spotted Swallowtail, Atenas, Costa Rica

And some more shots including of one not damaged (+ health update) . . .

Continue reading “Butterfly & Holiday/Health Report”
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Banded Peacock Butterfly

This one is not only a regular in my garden but I’ve photographed him all over Costa Rica as you can see in my Banded Peacock Gallery. Read more about this Banded Peacock, Anartia fatima on Wikipedia. Note that there is another butterfly with this English common name, but this Anartia fatima is found only from South Texas through Mexico and Central America, though most common in Costa Rica.

Banded Peacock, Anartia fatima, Costa Rica

Two more photos today . . .

Continue reading “Banded Peacock Butterfly”
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Many Beautiful Things

Surely I’m describing Costa Rica and I could be . . . though this time it is the title of a documentary biography I found on my new streaming service, Curiosity Stream, that replaced Netflix for me, permanently this time with a whole year of streaming costing less than one month of Netflix (a stripped down version for Costa Rica).

The full title of this bio is Many Beautiful Things, The Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter. (Link to Wikipedia description) In brief, she was one of the world’s best unknown painters in water colors (late 1800’s to 1928) who was befriended by John Ruskin, the leading art critic of the Victorian era who promised to make her the “greatest living artist” in England. She repeatedly turned him down while continuing to paint beautiful nature scenes and landscapes simply to praise God.

Continue reading “Many Beautiful Things”
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El Camino de Costa Rica – New Info

A Hiker Guide

One of my blog readers, Patrick, who is thinking about beginning his retirement in Costa Rica (like I should have!) shared with me the just-released new hiking guide available on hiking coast to coast across Costa Rica. It’s first on his agenda here! Are you interested in such a hike?

Available on Amazon as paperback or Kindle edition: El Camino de Costa Rica Hiker Guide

There’s also a newer video of the trail than the one I showed earlier plus more new info on the website and I found a good “Make the Leap” story I’m also linking! 🙂 . . .

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Living Alone but Never Alone

I have been receiving support from so many people around the world that yesterday’s article in Washington Post motivated me to say something here about it. The article is titled I had ovarian cancer, was single and living by myself. But going through treatment, I was never alone. – dated 23 May 2021.

Though everything about us is different (age, sex, location, cancer type, treatment, etc.) – we both experienced the marvelous good nature of most people and both of us enjoy living alone though appreciating the help and concerns of other people. 🙂

Some ladies of Roca Verde are still bringing me meals even though I told them it is no longer necessary. Several have shared their experiences with cancer, and sometimes it feels like everyone in this little farm town of Atenas knows I have cancer and lovingly ask me how I’m doing and offer to help. I know most of the taxistas here and they are all so caring and helpful. The wonderful, loving people of Costa Rica are a big part of the “Pura vida!” I’m so fortunate to live here.

Likewise through the internet, my blog and its links to Facebook plus emails I feel like there are literally thousands praying for me around the world and staying in touch, from old friends to never-met new ones, as is possible on the internet.

I am at peace and believe the Lord is watching over me just like all these friends and neighbors or is it God working through them? I believe so and I’m optimistic about the future with many more nature trips around Costa Rica with my camera that I can still use, even with one eye, and the trip I have scheduled 5.5 weeks after radiation concludes will have given me time to recover some from most side-effects and now gives me something to look forward to. . .

. . . I will be flying to the southern tip of the Osa Peninsula, near Panama border, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the mouth of Golfo Dulce where you sometimes see whales, while also hiking around the southern end of the largest protected rainforest in Central America. What could be better than that? And I’m still alive to enjoy it! 🙂 Bosque del Cabo Rainforest Lodge is west of Puerto Jimenez at the village of Cabo Matapalo, south of Corcovado National Park. Places like this are the reason I moved my retirement to Costa Rica! 🙂 For photos of other places I’ve already visited here see: My Costa Rica Trips Gallery. And you’ll know why I’m “Retired in Costa Rica,” the name of my blog and website.

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps. 

Proverbs 16:9

¡Pura Vida!

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Dragonflies and Damselflies

Saturday morning in Atenas I checked with my new internet order-delivery service called “Atenas WebShop” and had two packages, one a new paperback book from Amazon.com, Dragonflies and Damselflies of Costa Rica, A Field Guide by Dennis Paulson and William Haber (Link to Amazon ordering). It’s also available direct from the publisher, Cornell University Press.

It is a very thorough and scientific book and the first I’ve found anywhere here to help me identify these odonatan insects that I occasionally photograph. They have detailed descriptions and photographs of all 283 Dragonflies and Damselflies identified in Costa Rica with more being discovered frequently here.


I will use it to try and identify the ones I already have in my Dragonflies and Damselflies Photo Galleries, though it will not always be easy as there are some finely detailed differences between many species that all of my photos are not good enough to show, but at least I will have more labeled than before! 🙂


Now I just wish someone would develop as good a field guide for the butterflies of Costa Rica! A much bigger job! And until then I will continue to use the Butterflies of Mexico & Central America book for my IDs.


¡Pura Vida!

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Hotel Art

As Friday’s post featured a few works of art at the Radiotherapy Clinic, this post shows some of the art I’ve enjoyed being around at my hotel during this therapy time. It’s not a replacement for visiting the closed museums, but it is always enjoyable to be around good artwork anytime and anywhere!

Breakfast Bar Art



And a short slide show of more . . .

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Age 107 and “My Abandonment” – Related?

This and Feature Photo at Top are Sunrise from Hotel Banana Azul, Caribe, Costa Rica

Many days an older women in a wheel chair is treated at Radioterapia just before me. The other day I asked the therapists how old she was and in unison they said, “107.” She’s obviously a fighter, still battling cancer at this age! And always smiles when I speak to her, though I don’t have her name or photo yet, I hope to one day.

In Costa Rica many people live to be over 100 years of age. Five areas of the world with a high concentration of people living past 100 are called “Blue Zones” (Wikipedia link), including one in the Nicoya rural area of Costa Rica.

The ingredients of health and long life, are great temperance, open air, easy labor, and little care.

~Philip Sidney

This 107 year old woman reminded me of the many motivations that led to my radical decision to move to Costa Rica in 2014 – including health and old age – while many Americans were questioning me “abandoning” the security, safety, and richness of the U.S. (though I had trouble “making ends meet” living there). 🙂

I spoke to this in my December 21, 2014 blog post (just 3 days before arriving in Costa Rica) sharing one of my favorite Thomas Merton poem-prayers which I repeat here as one example of my Costa Rica Adventure being as much about faith as it is retirement in nature:

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Oxen Art

At one point in the early 2000’s it seemed to have been a popular community art project to create a bunch of statues of something representing a community or state and have an art contest with local painters. Well, that was done in Costa Rica sometime prior to 2009 and the oxen animal (not the more famous ox cart) was chosen. A winner is chosen with his/her cash prize and then all the entries become “Public Art” placed around town in parks or other public places or businesses and individuals can buy with a large donation to “Public Art” in that community. (See below how that was done 3 times during my years in Nashville.)

Long story short, one of the “Art Ox” ended up in the gardens of Best Western Irazú it was called then, now Best Western Plus San Jose. FYI, that is coffee beans painted on the side of the oxen and the basket he is figuratively eating out of is one of the traditional coffee bean picking baskets used by workers to harvest coffee beans when ripe. The only other painted ox I have photographed was at Hampton Inn Airport and I can’t find that photo.

Ox Art, Best Western Plus, San Jose, Costa Rica

A Similar Public Art Project in Nashville 3 times

And with those three contests and additions of art I managed to photograph most if not all of the entries which are now public art like the oxen here in Costa Rica:

It is fun to live in places when neat things like these art projects happen! Just a small part of my many memories of 37 years in Nashville!

More Art in Costa Rica Galleries

¡Pura Vida!