Day 5
December 3rd: Costa Rica
Bob: We docked at Puntarenas, Costa Rica, shortly after sunrise, which gave us a nice view of the small town and mountains in the background. The pilot edged us up to a 1/2 mile long dock that looked exactly like a long, low bridge for a 2-lane highway that just happened to dead end in the middle of the bay. Well, the dock essentially WAS a two lane highway; the tour buses had to carefully drive out to the ship on one lane and then back to shore on the other lane. Despite the fact that 1500 out of 2000 or so guests were disembarking at Puntarenas and the capacity of the Princess Theater which was used as the staging area was only 700 persons, our disembarkation went smoothly with no crowding or delays whatsoever. For that I credit the staff of the Coral Princess who had tightly staggered the arrival times of the various tour groups in the Princess Theater so that it was never overloaded, at least while we were there. Our tour was an all-day tour that combined a cable car ride through the rain forest in the morning with a boat ride through a mangrove swamp in the afternoon, so we were one of the first groups to depart. The impression I had of rural Costa Rica during our 1.5 hour ride to the rain forest site was that the country had nowhere near the poverty levels that we had observed in Guatemala and Nicaragua. I saw some dilapidated shacks, to be sure, but they were few and far between and still looked like bigger, sturdier shacks than I had seen in the shantytowns in Guatemala. Most of the rural housing was just that: small but solid-looking and well-kept one-story bungalows, most often constructed with concrete blocks or stucco. Rhyan, our guide for the day, mentioned that Costa Rica was 60% middle class with another 20% of poorer folks and 20% of richer folks, a much more stable distribution of wealth than I think is true in other Latin American countries. In fact I saw a few fancy, gated communities that would appeal to either rich Costa Ricans or foreigners, as their sale signs were in English and the prices were in the $200,000 - $300,000 range. Foreigners were also allowed to actually own land outright in Costa Rica, which is not in general true in Central America. Judging by the highway billboards I saw along the way, English seems well on its way to becoming the de facto second language of Costa Rica. Three out of the 5 siblings in Rhyan's family have learned English and he also told us that Costa Rica welcomes retired immigrants by offering dual Costa Rican citizenship, a generous, open-door policy that is the polar opposite of the immigration barriers set up by countries like Canada. He explained that the Costa Rican view is pragmatically based on the likelihood that foreign retirees with the wherewithal to retire abroad are, compared to most Costa Ricans, quite wealthy and would likely support at least one or two servants in their household or in the supporting domestic industries, which helps sustain full employment. |
Monika: This was our big day. We had signed up for a full day excursion with a tram ride in the rainforest in the morning, lunch and then a boat ride in the afternoon. Although over half of the passengers had signed up for one excursion or another, it was very smoothly handled. Stickers were handed out at the entrance to the theater for only those excursions that were ready to leave within the next 30 minutes. They sections in the theater dedicated to each excursion and very clearly marked. When all people had arrived we were escorted to the bus. Very smooth! The bus again was air-conditioned and comfortable. However, since it was designed for the slightly smaller people of Costa Rica, poor Bob had barely room for his knees. But he still managed to take nice pictures of the countryside. Our guide's name was Rhyan - actually his given name was Ryan, but when he got his drivers license at 18 it was misspelled "Rhyan". The civil servant who made the mistake and who must have apprenticed in the New York Department of Motor Vehicles, said this was the way it was and if he wanted it changed he would have to fill out a lot of paperwork, get a lawyer, go to St Jose, wait 6 months, and then see what happened. So he just accepted the new spelling of his name. It seems DMV personnel are the same all over the world. Besides this little inside story, Rhyan also was a font of knowledge about the fauna, flora, local economy, and anything you asked. He had a degree in eco-tourism and our first stop was an aerial tram. The company really tried to be ecologically conscious. The tram was built without building roads, the material was dropped by helicopter to exactly the spot it was needed. But it went farther, there no smoking allowed anywhere in the park and if you wanted to put on insect repellent you had to do it in their main area, not in the forest. |
Bob: After spraying on some insect repellent, which in retrospect I think was totally unnecessary, we took a short path to the boarding platform for the tramway where they assigned us seats so as to keep each tram balanced. The trams were open-sided cages with four rows of two seats each. Each tram had a naturalist in the back who pointed out the various flora and fauna and discussed details of the ecosystem as we silently glided up the mountainside. The trams were smooth and basically noiseless, so we could not only easily hear the naturalist but also hear the other sounds of the rain forest like bird calls, waterfalls, and so forth. It was, I suppose, the next best thing to cruising along the rain forest canopy in an airship and quieter than any motorized form of transport could ever be. The tramway had to halt, of course, as each tram at the was being either loaded or unloaded at the boarding platform. The pauses gave the naturalist time for more detailed explanations and gave me time to try to take sharp, clear photographs, which was much more difficult when the tram was moving. The rain forest was lush, with many different shades of green and huge trees with very different leaves. The balsa tree, as I recall, had one of the very biggest leaves, which fit into the balsa's survival strategy of growing very quickly in any new opening in the forest canopy. The extremely light wood of the balsa tree would also be quicker to grow, I expect, so it can more quickly exploit openings in the canopy than other slower growing and denser varieties of trees. On many of the trees we also saw termite nests attached to the trunk and the mud termite tunnels weaving their way up and down the trunks. That surprised me as I usually think of termites as being "in the ground" rather than having nests up on trees, and since the nests were 20-40 feet high in those trees, the termite tunnels ultimately lead that far down to the ground level. |
Monika: The tram were little gondolas holding 8 people and a naturalist that took us up into the rainforest, 30 minutes up and 30 minutes down. The naturalist pointed out the different trees and wildlife we saw. We actually did see a large-beaked toucan in its natural habitat and an iguana resting on a branch. |
Bob: We brushed against occasional branches on our way up and down the mountainside, so we got a really close look at the bark and stuff growing on it. A couple of tree branches were the scene of tremendous activity, with leaf-cutter ants scurrying up the branch and then back down the branch with sections of leaves carried above their heads. That was fascinating, if somewhat vaguely disturbing to watch--I have been bitten by the warrior ants guarding a huge nest and their bite is surprisingly painful. The naturalist described how the ants store the leaves in their underground nest in order to foster the growth of a fungus which is the main food of the ants, I gather. He also described the army ants that can flow across a landscape and just eat everything in their path, and imagining a swarm of hungry ants crawling on my skin made me itch a bit. As we glided along we also saw several beautiful species of flowers, a couple of which I think our guide said were wild orchids. Other splashes of color were provided by bromeliads and epiphytes growing on the trees' branches. We also saw an iguana sitting motionless on a branch, several butterflies or moths flitting among the flowers, and birds, in particular toucans, sitting on branches or flying by. We were so absorbed by watching all this that the hour passed by in the blink of an eye. |
Monika: . Besides actually flying through the rain forest was simply fun. I enjoyed just looking out over the forests and looking at the different trees. |
Bob: After disembarking from the tram, Rhyan reconvened our bus group and led us through the adjacent garden area where the different tropical plant species are cultivated. Several of the plants were spices and he would carefully pick and crush a leaf and then have us all smell it and guess what kind of plant the leaf was from. One plant that had a tantalizingly familiar smell for me turned out to be the main spice ingredient in "Old Spice" aftershave! Another plant's leaves had a weirdly tangy but not unpleasant smell, and it turned out to be the main ingredient of Channel No. 5! The garden also had examples of coffee and cocoa plants. We had actually seen coffee plants with ripe red berries on the drive up to the rain forest, so I was able to identify that plant correctly, but I had actually never seen a cocoa plant up close and was very surprised by the shape, size and color of the seed pod. The seed pod is light green and shaped kind of like a shrunken football with deep grooves in it. Who knew! At the upper end of the garden was a set of cages with snakes in them. Costa Rica has a tremendous variety of plant and animal species, so it was not surprising that there are a large number of poisonous and non-poisonous snakes. The poisonous ones all appeared to be pit vipers, and the one that kills over a thousand people a year is the "Fer de Lance", a pretty looking but very territorial and aggressive snake. There was at least one species of boa constrictor, and Rhyan mentioned that some of the pineapple plantations in Costa Rica use boa constrictors to control the rat populations that would otherwise ruin the harvest. |
Monika: Part of the park was a garden with a lot of different flowers, plants, and herbs. Rhyan explained every plant and crushed leaves to let us sniff the different herbs. It was really a lot of fun. At the end of the garden were different snakes and at this point we found out we were in the "rain"forest. It did not rain very hard but it was a rather refreshing sprinkle. Back at the main building we had lunch, a typical Costa Rica lunch: rice, black beans, chicken, and fruit. Rather very tasty. |
Bob: After the tour of the gardens we returned to the cafe in the pavilion for a lunch featuring chicken, rice and black beans, and other fruits and vegetables that would be part of a normal Costa Rican diet. I liked everything except the papaya, which was disappointingly bland. Reboarding our bus, we drove back down the main highway for about half an hour and then turned off toward the coast down another packed dirt road. This time we stopped along the shore of the river where we boarded our boat for the tour of a mangrove swamp, Actually about 2/3 of the tour was in a stretch of the river about half a mile up and down from the landing, while the other 1/3 was in a small tributary leading into the mangrove swamp. We saw quite a variety of wildlife even along that short stretch of river! |
Monika: After lunch it was back into the bus for our bus ride to the river. There we boarded a river boat and were taken for a two hour ride up and down the river. |
Bob: The widest variety of wildlife we saw were by far and away the birds. Along the shore we saw waterfowl like great blue herons, striped herons, roseate spoonbills, storks and several different species of ibises. Apparently to tell the different species of ibis apart you have to look at their legs. One species of ibis had a very vivid set of yellow feet attached to black or dark gray legs, which was a striking combination. One species of stork had a big, wicked-looking black bill that it used to industriously probe the river bottom for food. Up in the trees we saw other birds like a scarlet macaw, a beautiful bird that looks almost like a rainbow when it flies past. A family of boat-billed herons was perched in some branches right beside the riverbank and stayed put as we chugged by, so we were able to get good pictures of them. A swamp hawk (I think!) also posed nicely on its branch, clearly watching for lunch. |
Monika: We saw a lot of river birds, herons, egrets, and storks. But there were also some special sightings: two beautiful scarlet macaws alighted in a tree, several boat-billed herons - rather funny looking puffed-up birds, and a tiger heron that actually had a striped chest. |
Bob: Along the riverbank we also found a brown and a green iguana sunning themselves and waiting for prey. The most interesting reptile was the "Jesus Christ lizard", so called because it can actually run across the surface of the water. How? It is a skinny, lightly-built lizard has big, webbed feet and apparently runs really, really fast across the water! Rhyan said he had watched one run all the way from one bank of the river to the other, and the river was about 100 yards wide at that point. The biggest reptile, however, were the crocodiles that we found on several of the mudbanks along the sides of the river, particularly down near the ocean. Mostly they were lazing around soaking up the sun, but we saw one waddling along on the shore and a couple swimming slowly on the surface. Those crocs on the mudbanks didn't bother me at all, but when one suddenly surfaced about an arm's length from my left elbow and opened his mouth to snap at me, I was startled so much that I almost didn't take his picture. As it was, I was a little late pushing the shutter release and all I got was a close up of his eyes as he started to go back under. Some of the tour operators feed these crocodiles pieces of raw chicken from the boats to get them to show off for their passengers, so that crocodile may have just been coming over for his expected treat. Nevertheless, the quickness of the lunge and that huge set of really big teeth was a bit unnerving because this was not, after all, the Universal Studios tour and that was a real, hungry, wild animal rather than a big rubber "Jaws"! |
Monika: Of course, there also were some iguanas. But the main attraction of the river were the crocodiles. They were sleeping on the sandbanks, swimming in the water, or just sunning themselves. It was really quite fascinating. |
Bob: The final 1/3 of our tour was up a side canal and then off into a small side stream leading into the mangrove swamp. There our captain moored our boat by the simple expedient of grabbing onto some exposed mangrove roots and then turned off the engine so that we could experience the real sounds of the swamp. Rhyan could imitate bird calls well enough that he got some territorial defense responses from the birds in the neighborhood, and our captain imitated the peculiar hoot of the howler monkeys, who obligingly also responded. We also watched some remarkably colorful land crabs crawling around on the riverbank, but then it was finally time to head back to our bus and return to our ship. Sigh. |
Monika: At the end our little ship went into one of the side creeks of the mangrove swamps. The trees came so close, you could almost touch them. We could hear the howler monkeys in the distant but did not see them. We only saw little crabs walking on the roots of the trees. |
Bob: Back at the ship we used the waning minutes of daylight to walk back out to the beach at Puntarenas. The vendors were already closing up their stalls for the day, but one guy with wood carvings had a small toucan that Monika liked, so we bought it for $2 (nickname: "Twofer the Toucan") and headed back to the ship. I would have enjoyed walking around the town a bit or taking some of the other excursions in Costa Rica, but our ship was due to leave so we went back for a dinner on board. After dinner it was already dark but we watched the lights of Puntarenas fade into the night as we put out to sea. After dinner at the buffet, I was too tired to write so I curled up with a book while Monika processed pictures for a couple hours. We take so many low-probability pictures that to conserve storage we have to delete a lot of the bad ones before storing the remainder on the computer and on our backup chips. Actually looking at each picture and making a quick decision to keep or delete takes a surprising amount of time and effort when you are talking about 500-600 pictures, and between our three cameras we had taken about that many during our really interesting day in Costa Rica. |
Monika: After we got back to the ship we still had an hour before the ship was going to sail, we decided to look at the little fleamarket that had been set up at the beach. The vendors were about ready to pack up, but we did find a little handcarved wooden toucan for $2. When we got back to the ship, we found that several buses had not yet arrived back. So we rested a bit before going up to the sundeck to watch the ship finally leave port. |
