I daily encounter the huge Strangler Fig Tree by my house and almost daily the one on the road in front of my house by the cow pasture. The Wikipedia article gives the broader information about the many different tropical ficus trees with the common name of “Strangler Fig.” I am not able to identify which ficus tree it is in my yard and down the road by the cow pasture. They both seem to be typical of others I’ve seen on my travels across the country, but I will not try to guess the species and online searches only confuses me inf my ID effort! 🙂
The feature photo at top is the horizontal view of the one in my yard as seen from the corner of my terrace and below is a vertical shot from my terrace and another from within my yard closer. Though you cannot see it in these photos, it, like all this species, strangled a smaller tree that now has just one limb living. It will likely also overtake another little tree between it and the street.
Or one of the many other brown skippers! 🙂 This one was on the glass-top table on my terrace this morning and I snapped him/her with my cellphone. Interesting and my first for this particular species.
They usually have a nativity, but for now just this tree and laurels around the entrance.
La Coope Supermercado, Atenas
Entrance to my favorite supermarket, La Coope, operated by the local coffee farmers’ cooperative. I try to keep my money local. 🙂 The other big supermarket is “Maxi-Pali,” a Walmart-owned junk store.
The family that does “Two Weeks in Costa Rica” blog/newsletter has an article about what Ticos do during the holidays which is also “Summer Vacation” from school for all ages with graduations the middle of December and the start of new school year in February. Thus lots of “family vacations” during this time, especially the week between Christmas and New Years when many businesses and factories, etc are closed. The beaches and mountain lodges are full of Ticos that week! Everything is already festive by December 1 with many decorations up and special meal preparations started. Read about it in the Two Weeks guy’s article:
2020 Monkeying Around on Christmas Eve at Arenal Observatory where I will be again next Christmas or 2022. Good lodges like this one are booked solid for Christmas a year ahead. I just made my ’22 reservations.
Well, just one of many vistas from the hill above my house, but one of my favorite, the hilltop farm of the local farmers’ university here in Atenas, usually covered in cows. 🙂
Hilltop Farm next door to Roca Verde Residential Community.
And that’s the last photo to share from my “Walk up the Hill!” 🙂 Just 4 more days before I go to a Pacific Coast resort south of here for Christmas where I will do daily “same day” reports on that part of my paradise! 🙂 Happy Holidays!
On my walk up the hill the other morning a couple of little planes flew over and I decided to “capture” the second one in a photo! It is not one of our commercial passenger planes, Sansa Airlines, but some older private plane doing who knows what? 🙂
This is the last bird I will show from that nice morning walk up my hill with camera in hand! It is the fairly common Tropical Kingbird (eBird description link) and of course I have a lot more photos in my Tropical Kingbird Gallery from 18 different locations in Costa Rica! 🙂
Tropical Kingbird, Atenas, Alajuela Province, Costa Rica
. . . lovers of stories, books and libraries – the 3 main characters in this multi-layered story of totally different people from the 1450’s all the way through 2020 and to the future in 2164, all impacted by this fictitious lost and found story by a very early Greek writer who called his story “Cloud Cuckoo Land” (in Classical Greek of course!). It touches on so many life issues and about our own future on earth that I won’t try to list them all. You move between the stories of totally different people (ages 12 to 86) affected by Cloud Cuckoo Land (the Greek novel) in Constantinople (1450’s), Bulgaria (1450’s), Idaho (1940’s to 2020), Korea (1950’s), and outer space (2164) so that like his “All the Light” book (just 2 overlapping stories) you can get confused at first (if not more so). Eventually the many complicated pieces of the puzzle start coming together and you too begin to get what all these others are getting from Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is more multi-layered than Anthony Doerr’s previous classic All the Light We Cannot See (Goodreads Reviews), but just as impactful (if not more so) and will certainly become another classic! I highly recommend both books! 🙂
Read some otherGoodreads Reviews of this NY Times best seller, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Now I will simplify my reading escapes with another Agatha Christie mystery! 🙂 Rest my simple mind which is still spinning from this read. 🙂
The “resident big bird” in Roca Verde neighborhood with a lot of them is the Gray-headed Chachalaca (eBird description link) and you can see some of my many photos from here and other locations in Costa Rica in my Gray-headed Chachalaca Gallery.
Earlier I shared my shots of the Blue Grosbeak female from this same walk up the hill, now a couple of shots of a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak (eBird description link) which doesn’t have the “rose breast” that the male has, and I saw no males of either of these grosbeaks today. You can see my other photos of both male and female in my Rose-breasted Grosbeak Gallery seen earlier here near my house plus at Monteverde and at Xandari Resort Alajuela and as with most birds, the male is more colorful. 🙂
