Thursday August 1 – Puntarenas Costa Rica

Our guide, Mariela, and driver, Bosco, took us to the rain forests of Costa Rica.  On this two and a half hour drive, we stopped at a coffee plantation and had a great cup of coffee.  People who know their coffees claim that Costa Rica produces the best coffee.  The country produces coffee, bananas and rice for export. 

In 1949 Costa Rica became a republic and got rid of its army and navy and just kept a very small police force.  I think there must be quite a lot of crime because of the lack of police as we saw all the houses fortified with razor wire.  The money saved by the abolition of these forces is used for education and health.

There is a saying that if it won’t grow in Costa Rica, it is because it hasn’t been planted.  The heat and the rain sustain a beautiful green land with a profusion of flowers, fruits and vegetables.  We visited the Paz Waterfall and gardens.  Here they have a refuge for animals that have been illegally kept as pets and for animals that have been mistreated.  We saw Toucans in their enormous aviary as well as all types of brightly coloured parrots.  The ducks and little humming birds were just roaming free.  Humming birds are amazing.  They are the smallest birds in the world but for their size they have the largest brain of all animals.  They have no sense of smell and beat their wings at around 60 times per second. 

We also saw monkeys, snakes, jaguars, ocelots and leopards.  The butterfly enclosure had large coloured butterflies.  The waterfall was high but narrow, set amongst lush vegetation.  After all the blue of the sea, it was wonderful to take in the green of the grass, trees and ferns.

Our lunch was a feast of colour.  Orange carrot, red beetroot, green lettuce, purple onion, green peas and beans, yellow corn accompanied our barbecued chicken and watermelon juice.  On the way back to the ship Mariela bought us a banana each.  These were the bananas picked straight from the tree and not the ones that are gassed to preserve them for export.  They were so creamy.  The best taste.  She also bought us a rambutan each from the roadside stall.  As most people had not tasted this fruit before, she demonstrated how to eat it, by biting into the skin and twisting it to release the fruit, then discarding the pip.  There are many exciting things to do in Costa Rica.  The rest will have to wait for another day. The main highway was blocked on the way back to the ship for a local procession on a public holiday for St Mary of the Angels.

We had a New Zealand comedian for entertainment tonight.  He was very good imitating different accents from many countries, but I was so tired that I went to sleep for a good bit of his performance. Did you know that a sentence spoken slowly with a lilt can sound Welsh but when spoken the same way quickly sounds Pakistani?