December 31, 2022

Happy New Year’s Eve

Today we are in Puntarenas Cost Rica. Perhaps the skinniest pier we have seen so far. Trucks and busses have to back down the pier as there is no space to turn around.

The Star Clipper was in port. A nice looking ship, but not our style we decided. Looked like they might put a person to work.

We did a short walk into the town in the morning before our excursion to the cloud forest. Not a lot to see in this little beach town. I do wonder how long you get to rent the bathrooms for? Some of the crafts were nice and very colorful.

The bus ride to the forest was about 1.5 hours and was interesting as we climbed from sea level to the cloud forest. It is called a cloud forest because it is a rain forest above 3000 ft.

We saw several restaurants advertising “Typical Food Here” seemed odd, but we were to find out first hand. Our first stop was for a typical lunch. Apparently typical food at this location is served cafeteria style and we got rice, beans, chicken or pork, a potato vegetable stew (this was excellent) and a fried banana and tamarind juice. It was all very tasty.

Once we got into the cloud forest we saw a number of Tanagers (Silver-throated Tanager, Bay-headed Tanager, Emerald Tanager) and the national bird of Costa Rice, the Yiguirro otherwise known as the Clay Colored Thrush.

We also saw a bunch of humming birds, zippy little critters are hard to photograph. We also saw an lizard, a baby green tree frog and a toad living in a root. See if you can spot him.

The forest itself was amazing, everything damp and dripping. We saw huge tree ferns, wild orchids, Strangler figs, walking palms and many other plants and flowers. The hydrangeas that almost every person has planted in their yard up near the cloud forest were as big as my head and beautiful.

We hiked down into a canyon to a small river, over a few suspension bridges and then back up out of the canyon. We certainly got our exercise.

Good night from Costa Rica. Next we have 4 sea days until Cabo San Lucas. I plan to post something of a ship tour over the next couple days. If there is something you specifically want to see, please let me know.