View from the balcony; I found mountains! Good morning, Costa Rica.
We booked a ship excursion: A Walk in the Clouds. Here is its description:
Explore the lush ecosystem of a cloud forest as you walk along beautiful trails with a naturalist guide. Begin with a 1 hour and 45 minute scenic drive to San Luis Park. You'll walk to the hummingbird garden, an open area where these tiny, colorful birds flit about gathering sweet nectar from blooming flowers. A series of suspension bridges cover more than a half mile of the cloud forest, and walking across them is the ultimate way to get a bird's-eye view of the ecosystem. Back on terra firma, hike alongside sparkling rivers and cascading waterfalls. Refresh at a restaurant with a traditional lunch. On your return, stop at El Jardín to admire the gardens and peruse a well-stocked souvenir shop before continuing to the ship.
We missed El Jardín with gardens. Travis found when we were looking at an independent tours that El Jardín looked closed. So, this makes sense, though missing the gardens is sad. They did have shopping available at our lunch stop in San Luis. Not mentioned, but that I enjoyed a lot, was the birds by the lunch spot too. They put out food and were attracting them well.
The tour meeting place on the ship and heading outside to meet the guide felt very disorganized based on our other experience with other cruise lines. We were supposed to be in dining room at 8:30 am. You always hear not to be late, but there was no concept of late because there were long lines on both sides of the dining room with multiple different tours gathering. I had to go back to the room for my sunglasses and allergy medicine so lost our place in line. Though it did not matter. I thought at first people were saying that there were different meetings times, so the earlier times needed to be at the front of the line. Then later I decided that this was not really true. When getting to the front of the line, they gave us a colored and number sticker, and we walked into the dining room. I assumed to sit until our group was called, but then we were all told to walk out, just all groups together, following the full group. Off the ship each tour had a sign and when they had enough people for a bus/van, they walked us to our van. Ours had 20 passengers. There were some big coaches too for other tours. So, really the process worked fine, but was not what I expected, so seemed like chaos.
Our tour guide, Minor (that is probably not the spelling; just how he said it was pronounced) was very good and shared a lot about family life and government in Costa Rica, which was very interesting. As a contrast, our tour guide in Panama City did not, so I do not feel like after that I knew Panama as well. Our driver spotted two Scarlet Macaws and pulled over. We just saw their tails as they were flying away. I only got one smeared picture of them flying away.
They used trees for the posts of barbed wire fences. Once a year, they cut the tops off, and tree forms a bump or knot where it was cut. These are not the best examples, but you can see the smaller trees growing back small at the top.
Other nice vistas from the drive.
We arrived at San Luis, which had the hanging bridges and ziplining.
We left for the rainforest hike with the hanging bridges from the buildings with the restaurant, restrooms, gift shop, and food shop. They had an area in back where they put out food to attract birds. I don't have a picture, but we found the Costa Rica national bird. Of all the pretty birds, they picked a brown bird for the national bird. It does have a pretty singing voice though we heard. Our tour guide showed us/told us about local birds and animals from a DK travel book on drive.
On the trail with welcoming heart arches.
Our guide pointed the mushroom. Then someone found a big caterpillar. It was on the trail and did not seem to be doing very well. Our guide moved it up to the side of the trail, so it would not get stepped on.
Our first bridge with a waterfall and creek below it.
Heart of palm; they had to make it illegal to remove the heart because the hearts were selling well, and this killed the tree.
More rainforest pictures. Bromeliad growing on a tree.
A very high hanging bridge that we did not go on. I think it was related to the ziplining.
They put out hummingbird feeders. He was fast; this is the best picture that I got -- on the left side of the feeder. An interesting plant.
We then got back the food out for the birds area and saw even more this time. Aren't they cute!
The guide then asked if we wanted to go eat. I was happy watching the birds. I also did not remember our trip coming with a lunch, but it did. I was not close enough not to the beginning of the line to hear the guide explain what all the food on the served buffet was, and I'm a picky eater. When I asked, they gave the dish name, which I did not recognized. I pointed to what I thought was the pork but ended up with chicken. Travis got the pork, and we shared. I was worried that the chicken did not look good, but it was good. His pork was better, but the chicken was still good. It had a cream sauce. My plate in the picture -- cream chicken, rice, vegetables called picadillo, plantain, and a salad.
At lunch, we were later joined by the lady that helped me learn the ship laundry system and her husband. After eating, we visited the restroom, and I got a magnet at the shops. The magnet had sloths on it that we did not manage to see in Costa Rica or in Panama City, boo.
Back in the van, we headed back. This is greenhouses for ornamental plants that Costa Rica grows and sells primarily to the Netherlands. Interesting electrical work; it looks like some that we saw in Valparaíso, Chile. Beautiful vistas with some rainforest clouds.
Church and police vehicle. Local houses; I saw several houses and sheds/garages built at an angle since the land was at an angle.
Grandmas told kids to stay away from this flower -- the Angel's Trumpet -- since it is poisonous and hallucinogenic. It is pretty though.
In Costa Rica, they claim to have the best coffee. They did sell it for $22 in the gift shop. Travis had some at lunch and said that it was good. Coffee plants at an angle back in the bottom right. Our guide had a rough time picking coffee, so he went to his Dad and said that he wanted to go back to high school, after all. He was very happy with his tour guide career.
Back to the port area. Someone on our van asked if they could get off outside of port to explore a little more. Tours in other places have offered and/or allowed this. The guide said that local law requires that they return passengers to the pick up point, which was within the port gate. But, the person could walk back out on their own. Port security came on the bus and made sure that everyone had a Princess Medallion (cruise keycard) before we could enter.
Back to our room, we got some pictures of the ship birds (as I called them because they seemed to be following the ship). It was hard to get pictures or use the monocular from the balcony at times; with all the humidity in the area, they would immediately fog up. These birds, that we saw in a couple of ports, seemed to expend energy flying around all the time but never diving for food. I finally saw one dive.
We had a super fast MDR dinner with many people still ashore, went to the Juggler-Comedian show, and then walked the promenade.