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MeznG. In the air, on the road, river or sea again
I thought that maybe I should be putting the weather details on each day but really all I need to say is that the temperature doesn't vary much from 29-30 and humidity extreme.
Today we find ourselves in Costa Rica. The country is bordered by Nicaragua and Panama and has an Atlantic or Caribbean coastline as well as the Pacific.
The port is Puntarenas one of the 5 provinces of Costa Rica. We are going on a ship tour today to go river rafting on the Corobici River. It's a 90 minute drive along the Pan American Highway to the province of Guanacaste named after Costa Rica's national tree.
The drive is through small rustic villages and farmland. It's the end of the dry season and so the landscape is quite dry. As this is the Pan American highway there is a restaurant, bar or cafe every 500 metres or so. Costa Rican's largely rely on fishing and farming for their livelihood. They grow rice, pineapples, bananas and coffee in the highlands.
When we reach the river we divide into groups for the rafts. We join 4 others to make a raft of 6 and our guide is Roberto, a 22 year old lad. He is right from the get go a bit of a rat bag and a lot of fun. 1 minute into the ride we tackle our first rapid! The river is beautiful, reasonably fast running but the water level is not high due to the lack of rain in the dry season.
We see king fisher, no nose bats, iguanas, howling monkeys, egrets, boat billed herons, tiger herons but no crocodiles. The vegetation is lush and green and Roberto points out many varieties of trees and plants. The guides ability to pick out the wildlife is very impressive. It's an awesome 90 minute ride down the river with more than a few water fights and bumps along the way. We are totally drenched!
Back on dry land and in dry clothes we are served lunch. Started with chicken soup (I think) then either chicken, fish or beef with rice and beans and carrot and green beans. We went for the chicken and fish. It was very nice even the black beans were ok. This was followed by strawberry ice cream. Rice and beans is the staple diet here in Costa Rica. For breakfast it's rice and beans mixed together, lunch and dinner the rice and beans are separate!
Back on the bus now for the 90 minute drive back to the ship. It's hard not to be drifting off to sleep after the excitement and effort of the rafting. Unexpectedly the bus stops at a bird sanctuary which was not part of our itinerary and if anyone asks we were not there!
You do have to pay to enter the sanctuary but as our guides are in the know you can also walk through the carpark and if lucky see some birds. It's our lucky day as there, sitting on the verandah of the house is a toucan. What an unusual looking bird. He was not afraid of us at all in fact he was quite curious and flew down to walk around in front of us and then to get even closer he flew up onto the fence. He was not in a cage so he would be free to come and go but I'm assuming he gets fed and protected there. Up in the huge mango tree is a giant macaw, another special site. These birds are on the endangered list as they were formally caught and smuggled out of the country and sold on the black market or were taken as pets. They along with the giant green macaw are now protected. As we stand watching for other birds 2 pairs of macaws fly across in front of us. The Macaw mates for life so only has one partner. The are beautiful, big, colorful and graceful but very noisy birds. This was an added bonus to a special day. Now we head back to the ship.
The beach is unusual in that the sand is grey volcanic sand. It's quite funny seeing the people laying on the sand and turning over to be covered in black sand. I don't think I could handle that. Thank goodness for our lovely white sandy beaches.
We leave port at 6:45pm bound for Nicaragua.
Today we find ourselves in Costa Rica. The country is bordered by Nicaragua and Panama and has an Atlantic or Caribbean coastline as well as the Pacific.
The port is Puntarenas one of the 5 provinces of Costa Rica. We are going on a ship tour today to go river rafting on the Corobici River. It's a 90 minute drive along the Pan American Highway to the province of Guanacaste named after Costa Rica's national tree.
The drive is through small rustic villages and farmland. It's the end of the dry season and so the landscape is quite dry. As this is the Pan American highway there is a restaurant, bar or cafe every 500 metres or so. Costa Rican's largely rely on fishing and farming for their livelihood. They grow rice, pineapples, bananas and coffee in the highlands.
When we reach the river we divide into groups for the rafts. We join 4 others to make a raft of 6 and our guide is Roberto, a 22 year old lad. He is right from the get go a bit of a rat bag and a lot of fun. 1 minute into the ride we tackle our first rapid! The river is beautiful, reasonably fast running but the water level is not high due to the lack of rain in the dry season.
We see king fisher, no nose bats, iguanas, howling monkeys, egrets, boat billed herons, tiger herons but no crocodiles. The vegetation is lush and green and Roberto points out many varieties of trees and plants. The guides ability to pick out the wildlife is very impressive. It's an awesome 90 minute ride down the river with more than a few water fights and bumps along the way. We are totally drenched!
Back on dry land and in dry clothes we are served lunch. Started with chicken soup (I think) then either chicken, fish or beef with rice and beans and carrot and green beans. We went for the chicken and fish. It was very nice even the black beans were ok. This was followed by strawberry ice cream. Rice and beans is the staple diet here in Costa Rica. For breakfast it's rice and beans mixed together, lunch and dinner the rice and beans are separate!
Back on the bus now for the 90 minute drive back to the ship. It's hard not to be drifting off to sleep after the excitement and effort of the rafting. Unexpectedly the bus stops at a bird sanctuary which was not part of our itinerary and if anyone asks we were not there!
You do have to pay to enter the sanctuary but as our guides are in the know you can also walk through the carpark and if lucky see some birds. It's our lucky day as there, sitting on the verandah of the house is a toucan. What an unusual looking bird. He was not afraid of us at all in fact he was quite curious and flew down to walk around in front of us and then to get even closer he flew up onto the fence. He was not in a cage so he would be free to come and go but I'm assuming he gets fed and protected there. Up in the huge mango tree is a giant macaw, another special site. These birds are on the endangered list as they were formally caught and smuggled out of the country and sold on the black market or were taken as pets. They along with the giant green macaw are now protected. As we stand watching for other birds 2 pairs of macaws fly across in front of us. The Macaw mates for life so only has one partner. The are beautiful, big, colorful and graceful but very noisy birds. This was an added bonus to a special day. Now we head back to the ship.
The beach is unusual in that the sand is grey volcanic sand. It's quite funny seeing the people laying on the sand and turning over to be covered in black sand. I don't think I could handle that. Thank goodness for our lovely white sandy beaches.
We leave port at 6:45pm bound for Nicaragua.
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