Pura Vida

Rain Forest Tram

We arrived at our hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica, actually near 1 am Tuesday morning after a long but uneventful day of air travel. We are staying at a Marriott Courtyard, which would be expensive, but we are still using points I earned while I was still working. This has been the easiest Central American country for us as tourist. Costa Rica is the most visited nation in the Central American region. Despite being in Spanish speaking counties for years now our Spanish is extremely weak. That is not an issue here as most of the people we have interacted with such as taxi drivers, hotel staff, waiters, tour guides, all speak extremely good English. It so nice to be able to engage in conversation with the locals. We are impressed by how clean the city and the countryside is. This is certainly not the case in much of Central America.

Our first full day we went to the center of the city, which is always an interesting place to watch people and get a feel for the place. There we had lunch at cafe inside Teatro Nacional (National Theater). After a wonderful lunch in such a beautiful setting, we visited the Museo de Oro Precolombino (Gold Museum – Pre-Colombian) The museum building is in an unimpressive underground bunker, but the collection is truly impressive.

Museum Is Actually A Large Vault - Understandably So

We booked a trip to the rain forest for our second full day in Costa Rica. There are so many day trip options in Costa Rica that it was hard to choose. We were drawn to the aerial tram ride through and over the canopy of the rain forest in Braulio Carrillo National Park. The tour we booked would pick us up at our hotel, provide transportation to the park, an English speaking guide, the 90 minute aerial tram ride, lunch and then a walking tour, all in all about a seven hour package. As it happens were were the only ones that booked a tour for that day so it became a private tour. Our van driver Eric was a wealth of knowledge and pointed out the highlights along the way as we exited San Jose and climbed to the Continental Divide and then down the Caribbean side. At the park we were introduced to our guide, Dennis. Not only is Dennis's English excellent, but he is very knowledgeable about the wildlife and plant life. We would have missed so much without his instruction. One good example is the tent making bat.

Bat

Tent - Notice Cut Leaf to Form One Side Of Tent

To the untrained eye the large leaves on a certain type of plant just look like they are broken. Careful observation revels the breaks are clean and the leaf now forms a very neat tent. Looking under the leaf then further revels very peacefully hanging bats. We saw and learned so much that our walks on Bastimentos when we get back to Panama will be with much more informed observation. We only saw one other couple in the park and that was at lunch so our day continued as a private tour. Dennis pointed our how much better our day is compared to cruise ship days when 300 – 500 tourist descend on the park on a very tight time schedule. We sure are glad we didn't book a cruise ship day.