The Costa Rica Theme Park, But Nice

We sailed out of the beautiful port of Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala the day before yesterday and along San Salvador and Nicaragua yesterday, arriving at Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica early this morning. This is one of the most stable democracies in the Americas—think about that one a moment, will ya—and has become very popular as an eco-tourism destination. That means that most of folks from the USA come here to take very scary gondolas over tropical rain swollen rivers amidst dark green volcanic mountains (if they don’t do the much more scary adjacent zip line descent which seemed to be generating very loud screaming this morning), or observe carefully cultivated “wild” flowers and beautiful foliage along carefully prepared paths after driving modest distances along scenic roads and across rustic one-lane bridges. The line handlers at the Puerto Caldera, the primary Pacific container port where a Doll banana boat was being loaded (really) were carefully sweeping the dock for our arrival this morning. The primary cruise port is a little West of here up the coast at Puntarenas. So we were spared the stalls full of imported arts and crafts and perhaps the sight of another but much bigger big white shoebox by docking here.

But today’s short visit to the Costa Rica rain forest today was very nice, including the buffet lunch of local goodies, fresh corn tortillas, and wonderful fried plantains. Also the Costa Rican “Imperial” beer. Now that I think of it, especially that. I don’t recommend a full vacation as they have now developed this place so well that now it seems the entire country has become a rain forest theme park. But nice.

My camera seems to be working ok. Vodka as well as identifying a bad battery seems to have done the trick. That is, the expensive vodka on the camera’s battery contacts worked well along with taking it internally to help me to diagnose the constant low battery indication I was getting with freshly charged AA cells. We sail in a few minutes for Manta, Ecuador after another very enjoyable sea day. The new cruisers are now being called to “muster” for the life boat drill. I’m exempt as having supposedly done it last week when I got on. I will post this blog now and walk up and back in front of all the new people who in their life vests will look like Teletubbies.