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We arrived in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica and it’s a balmy and slightly humid day! We are docked in highly industrial area but fortunately the tour buses are close by. Today we are going on a group tour of the Tortuguero Canals. These canals are known as Costa Rica’s Amazon because of the surrounding rain forest. After a 30 minute bus ride, much of it along the coast, we arrived at a jungle-like covered patio that had some docks with a number of pontoon boats. We boarded one of the pontoon boats and slowly motored along the canals spotting all kinds of wild life including both hooter and spider monkeys, egrets, herons, bats and butterflies! We also saw two and three-toed sloths, caymans and crocodiles (actually…the crocodile turned out to be a log!) and even saw a tucan!
Here’s a stork and the elusive Costa Rican Cayman…err, well this was actually a log upon closer inspection!
After the canals we were brought to a banana plantation and saw how they grow and harvest bananas. There are daughters, mothers and grandmothers, in other words, three generations of sprouts on each plant at any given time. They cover the banana bunches with blue plastic material to protect them from the birds and keep the temperature up to encourage fast growth. Overall, it is a very manual process that involves the big companies bringing people into live in company housing on the plantation and work 12 hour days 6 days a week. For this they get room and board and approx. $1,200 month.
On the way back to the ship the tour guide stopped at a roadside vegetable stand and bought some very fresh, very small banans and a yellow, hard shelled fruit that had some juicy and sticky pods inside. Turns out it was raw cocoa. He let us all smell and the more adventurous (like me) taste it. Very interesting. It actually smelled like chocolate but with a slightly bitter taste.
Back on the ship Dale went to a Yoga class on the top deck and then worked on cleaning up the pictures he took (he took a LOT of pictures on the canal tour!). We also started preparing for tomorrow when we will traverse the Panama Canal! Then, we had a nice time with martinis at the Observation Lounge followed by another “magnum” night (Antorini Chianti Classico that is) at Prime 7.
Lots of pictures today!
Costa Rica Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Costa-Rica-11710/25152630_mCHRJh#!i=2062550081&k=MZRpWnr