We had a pleasant announcement the day before we reached our next port of Puerto Caldera in Costa Rica. This port is mainly a cargo port & is 20 mins by bus to the closet town of Puntarenas, also a port town but this cruise line, for some reason, does not stop in the town. The surprise was that funnily enough, the cargo port was being used by cargo ships and there was no room for us. We could either anchor & tender ashore or dock in Puntarenas. The captain made the right choice & chose the latter.
We arrived much earlier than the scheduled time of 8am & pulled into port around 5.30am. This time, because we had changed our clocks back (the 4th time change we've had so far) and sunrise was 5.30am we were more than ready to disembark by 8am. Being so close to the equator now we only have 12 hours of daylight and it's very humid, tropical & stormy. We were lucky on our tour as it didn't rain but it just bucketed down on Shirene's then later that night we had lots of rain and of course the usual thunder & lightening.
This time we had opted to take one of the ships organised excursion which I usually hate as it's full of old, incredibly slow stupid people with American accents. This was no exception & I caused a riot on the bus! More on that later. We were divided today, Shirene & Malcolm went up to the volcano & coffee estate while the rest of us decided on a train & mangrove boat tour. As Costa Rica is now getting very much into eco tourism, every tour is based on seeing the forests, wildlife, local productions and talking about conservation & protection of the environment. Our guide was very hot on this topic.
We took at bus for 20 odd minutes to get to the train. The bus was the flashiest bus I had ever been on. It had a door in between the driver & passengers so you had to climb on through one door, up the stairs, pass the cockpit of the drivers station then through another door & take one of the comfy seats, better than airplane ones. We happened to get on last so the only seats left were at the very back of the bus (remember this fact for my story). It happened that we had to drive passed our original port which was 20 minutes away to get to the train so I guess our change of port put an extra 40mins on our journey. Never mind, we saw things we wouldn't have I guess. We had a great guide who talked about the history & economy and if we passed something he though interesting he would stop the bus for us to see. The first impromptu stop was on the side of the road next to some trees where some white faced monkeys were swinging around. By the time I got my camera out, zoomed & focused I managed to get a great shot of a monkey's tail before he disappeared into the bushes. Another stop was beside a mahogany tree. He reached out and broke a pod off it then passed it around the bus so we could see how it was made up. The seeds are full of antioxidants so by making a tea from them is a great cancer fighting drink. Another plant was the Noni? tree. Not sure how to spell it but it also has a fruit to make tea from and is a very powerful cancer fighting agent. Apparently it tastes bloody horrible but I guess the alternative is worse. He made several stops like this to educate us on the different flora & fauna.
The country side looked very lush & tropical and even tho Costa Rica means Rich Coast I thought it looked much poorer than Mexico with the standard of housing very dismal, mostly shanty shacks or very run down properties. He described the people as being very rich in regards to quality of life with little stress and family values very high on their priorities. They are a welcoming people and will share all they have with one another or visitors and they certainly seemed to be friendly with ready smiles. We finally reached the train which was an old fashioned steam train with a couple of carriages & open windows. As we were last on the bus we were last off therefore last on the train and of course got the worst seat, right in front with no view. Mum sat with another lady so wasn't so bad, I managed to have a window beside me which I could hang out but not being able to see what was coming this could be a dangerous pratice. Jon had nothing to look at except the wall but he was close to the door so he stood, hanging on for dear life by the open door for the entire journey & thought he had the best seat in the house. We went through the rain forest & farm lands for about 40 minutes, passing shacks I thought no-one would be living in but there were people waving to us from the yards, incrediable.
Costa Rica doesn't actually have a train service since 1992 when there was a big earthquake on the other side of the country. Even though their rails weren't damaged, because the other sides was, the government closed the train service for the country & that was that. This train has only been resurrected since the cruise ships started coming & is purely for tourists so our guide was quite excited to be going on this trip.
It stopped at the end of the line then we were to be bused to a river. We decided to sit in different seats as we wanted to sit at the front and be first in line for a change. So Mum & I sat on these 2 seats & Jon sat opposite. This woman then came on board and stood beside me & said in her loud American accent, excuse me, you are sitting in our seats, would you please move. There was no way I was going to move, who said that these were her seats, how did she lay claim to them. So I said no and she can sit some where else. Well, what a performance she made, she was berating me, screamed out to the poor tour guide that someone was sitting in her seat & refused to move, held up the entire bus as no-one else could get on while she stood there stamping her feet. It was chaos. The guide was outside at this point trying to get everyone on the bus, he must have heard her screaming out his name & carrying on so he struggled passed everyone to calm her down and found another seat for her nearer the front that finally shut her up. I thought that bit was the most fun I'd had in a long time!! It's great when I don't have to be nice.
When we got off the bus at the river stop Mum put her bag on the seat so the woman wouldn't pinch it back and as I was the last one left holding the mahogany pod I left it on her seat as a little present. When we got back on board we saw her sitting there holding onto the pod! We had a little smirk.
The river wasn't as full of life as I was expecting and although it was a very pleasant cruise down the river we didn't see as much as I thought we would. Even so we did see a couple of pathetic looking crocodiles (coming from Australia where crocs are the real deal, this didn't look much to us), a lovely big green iguana sitting in the branches of a tree right beside the river, a black hawk and about half a dozen beautiful red Macaws flying high in the trees. They look magnificent flying in the wild.
On the way back in the bus we also stopped & saw howler monkeys so we did get some wildlife sightings but the biggest wildlife sighting was the woman on the bus!
When we got back we had time to go through the market that was lined up along the shoreline. Each stall sold mostly the same thing which was crafts indigenous to their area but mostly they had these beautiful wood products made from local woods including mahogany that were very hard to resist. We got chatting to one man who was trying to sell us these wooden pens in wooden boxes. When Mum said she didn't think she could get it in the country he guessed she was from either New Zealand or Australia. He said they were the only people in the world who didn't buy the wooden products. He guessed I was her daughter so suggested I should smuggle it in the country for her therefore it would be me in trouble. Charming. When she told him I lived in Australia he looked genuinely sad & felt very sorry for her. I guess that must be the family thing of theirs. Then we told him it was her 80th birthday which he was surprised about & when it came time to paying (yes, she did buy the pen) he gave her an extra dollar in change as a birthday gift. That wasn't all,, further down mum asked another stall holder the name of the town we were in so the girl got a postcard from her stand & showed her where we were in the picture. When Mum asked how much was it she said she could just take it. Now how many stall holders would ever do what these two did?
With that last impression of Costa Rica, we went back on board ship and waited for the sail away & farewell to a very interesting stop.
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