After arriving in San Jose the night before, I leapt into discovering Costa Rica. First few hours I walked around the streets of San Jose (only memorable for what was not memorable), and then ate my scrumptious fruit left in my room by the great staff at the Hotel Grano de Oro. The hotel is named after the “grain of gold” or for the coffee bean that has brought great riches to Costa Rica.
Henry, not Enrique, picked me up I’m our brightly covered “Turismo” van, so no one could confuse me for a native. Yeah right, like they did with the Guera mujera earlier that morning.
On the way to Puntarenas, we stopped to look at the HUGE crocodiles in the Rio Grande (same one apparently as we have), and the took a hike thru the Carara National Forest, so we could see lots of fauna and flora. What a good experience. It rained slightly before we started our hike (it is a rain forest after all), which brought out the Big lizards and small lizards and all the little bright green (and poisonous) frogs. The scarlet macaws are hard to see but are extremely vocal. Humanity was also difficult to find once we were deep in the forest, but the few examples that were encountered were invariably polite and white (from exotic locales such as London and Maryland).
These are termite nests. Henry told me if I got lost in the forest I could survive on them. But since we were NOT lost, Henry took me to the very native restaurant by the side of the road where we had a typical meal of rice, black beans, plantains, plus the meat of your choice. Is this where the meat plus 3 in the south comes from?
Late afternoon, we arrived at the resort on the Pacific. My room is large and clean. It is an all-inclusive hotel so once here, the theory is you don’t pay for food or drink, but I bet I’ll find a way to do so.
Theme: happy to be away. And the water is fine – to drink and for swimming!