COZZZZZZTA RICA

After exiting the Canal, we had a sea day on our way to CR.  We got to put our clocks back an hour after entering the next time zone.  Sticky bun and fresh OJ for breakfast, nice lunch with a couple from Austin, TX, played trivia with only us as a team, dinner (pea soup, escargot, and salmon) with a Trump-supporting (but nice) couple who were power cruisers with 6 future trips already lined up, and the evening entertainment of a trumpet playing singer and and lady standup comedienne.  Both were quite good, and we thought this the best show so far.

Unfortunately, CR was the most boring part of the trip, other than Puerto Vallarta (more about that later).  It’s too bad, because every travel report I’ve read about CR extols the natural beauty of the flora and fauna.  I’m sure they’re not lying, and were probably talking about the Caribbean side of the country, but our Pacific-side tour didn’t come close to being satisfying on either front.  We docked at Puntarenas, which is nothing more than a working seaport, no tourist sights at all. We had signed up for the most expensive (gasp) of the tours, at $199 each (!), a nine hour excursion to include the Pacific Rain Forest Aerial Tram and a boat trip of the “famed” Tarcoles River.  This was, of course, the “Manager’s Recommendation” of the various tour options offered by Celebrity.  The Manager is a master of hyperbole.

We hit the breakfast buffet early at 6:30, and after the usual waiting-around disembarkation routine, we boarded buses and settled in for a 1 1/2 hour ride to the rain forest tram.  I will say that everything was lushly green, but that’s all it was:  a lot of green.  The trams were modern and seemed well-maintained.  The group ahead of us taking off:

The rise up is pretty steep.  Note the two cars at the top, and the watercourse below.

Aaaaand, that’s pretty much all we saw.  Virtually no wildlife.  The most interesting things were the other trams.

OK, we did see one bit of fauna, a bird, waaayyy off in the jungle.  Can you spot it?  I had to use the electronic zoom on my little Lumix, and the results are definitely not sharp. Not even Audibon Chuck will be able to identify this sucker.

At least it wasn’t raining during our ride up and down the tram, but it sure started once we returned to the bottom.  The next phase of the tour was to view various snakes and critters in enclosures while trying to follow the earnest but unintelligible guide, Armando, all while trying to stay dry.  Yes, his mouth seemed perpetually to be skewed like that.  Nice guy, tho.

On our walkabout we did see a few bits of life.  Don’t have any notes on what the hairy pods were, but that’s a tree iguana and I think the plant is some variety of heliotrope, with a false flower which actually is an asymetric leaf.  I think.  Loni’s notes are, um, obscure.

We had lunch at the park, simple local fare that was quite tasty.  Beans, rice, chicken, salad, fruit, and a plantain cooked in maple syrup.  We also bought some CR coffee, 3 bags (12 oz each) for $15 total.  After lunch we piled back on the buses to go back to the coast for the Tarcoles River tour.  This turned out to be an even bigger dud than the tram.  I guess I had some African Queen steaming in mind, winding up a twisting river lined with dense jungle and lots of monkeys and birds.  Not!  We loaded on to the boat, scrambling and elbowing to get an outside seat so you could take a picture without shooting over someone.  Needn’t have bothered, there was precious little to shoot.  The “river” turned out to be the estuary of the river, very broad and with uninteresting vegetation on the banks.  So much for the African Queen. 

No monkeys or exotic birds, just caymans and mostly shorebirds we can see in California.  Even with my binocs there wasn’t much to view.

And that was pretty much it.  We spent a loooong time idling in the estuary at one point while the guide was imploring everyone to use their binocs or long lenses to see some interesting bird that was about a football field away in deep brush.  I never could focus on the dang thing, whatever it was.  This is pretty much all I saw.  I was sympatico with the guy in the rear leaning on his arm.  Oh, the excitement!

By the time we got back to the buses, the rain had started again and we got pretty soaked.  It was not a comfortable ride back to the ship in wet clothes inside a humid bus with 40 other drenched souls.  Once back, we changed clothes and opted to skip the sit-down dinner and headed for the buffet instead, and it wasn’t bad at all for dinner.  Roast beef, lots of Mexican entrees and sides, and of course desserts.  We looked in on the evening’s entertainment and saw some acrobats (meh) and some not-bad classic rock (Stones, Beatles, etc.).  Didn’t keep us from leaving early and crashing.  Fitting end for a fizzled day.