Oh, wait. Apparently I have that wrong. They make fences with cut off tree limbs, not people’s limbs. My bad.
The cool thing is that more often than not the limbs take root. It makes for very interesting fences.
Costa Rica is a very interesting place. Despite its small size it has some of the greatest biodiversity in the world. North and South America used to be separate continents, and after they joined up Costa Rica ended up with the southern animals and plants heading north, and vice versa. I’m not sure if I remember it correctly, but our guide told us something like Costa Rica having more species insects than all of Europe, and more species of mammals than the US and Canada combined.
The Costa Ricans prize this, which is why they’ve dedicated 1/3rd of the country to national parkland.
This was our longest tour for the cruise. We started at 7.15 with a two-hour bus ride into the mountains, half of it on uncovered roads. Narrow, winding, roads with kilometer-high drops three inches from the edge of the road. That. Was. Fun.
The trip up had a few standout moments. The first was when we stopped to watch a troop of howler monkeys feeding in a tree by the roadside. Of course every time I pointed a camera at the buggers they hid. Suspiciously squirrel-like behaviour. I smell a conspiracy.
Anyhow this is the best shot I managed to get.
The second highlight was getting bogged on an uphill stretch of muddy road. The bogging bit wasn’t all that exciting. The fun bit was when the driver backed up for another attempt, especially the second time. The bus was so close to the drop-off that it started to slide to the edge, but began leaning to the left.
Emma had a horrible sense of déjà vu, having gone through a similar experience in Switzerland, when she spent three-four hours sitting in a bus with the back half hanging over the edge of a 4,000 foot drop.
Me, I thought it was great. It was only a hundred foot drop, and there were plenty of trees to slow us as we rolled down. No big deal.
They finally off-loaded us and called ahead for a four-wheel drive to assist. That worked.
As a bonus, the walk up the hill gave Emma a chance to make a new friend.
We finally made it to the Monteverde cloud forest. A cloud forest is like a rainforest, but generally covered with clouds. The ecology is subtly different, but just as beautiful.
The complex is relatively new, and has only been open for a year and a half. They’ve built a small-gauge railway to take tourists into the heart of the forest. The trip in is spectacular in its own right, with walks through the forest once you arrive.
It also offers spectacular views of the valley to the east, including Lake Nicaragua and some big-ass volcano whose name I didn’t catch. At least it does when the cloud doesn’t cover everything. We were fortunate enough to get quite a good view across the valley, including Big-Ass Volcano.
Our guide, Julio, who was utterly brilliant, and the best guide we've had yet led us through the cloud forest, worded us up an led us through the forest.
It was fabulous. We were delighted to see flowers like this:
And equally delighted not to see the spider that spun this:
I’ll you spare the other 200 + pictures I took. My camera doesn’t do it justice. But it was so beautiful that we could have spent a week up there. Absolutely magnificent.
After an authentic Costa Rican lunch we headed back to the ship. The trip home was even more harrowing than the trip up. Same road, twice the speed.
I was glad Emma wasn’t in the window seat. Stark terror + Emma’s fingernails + my thighs = bloody pulp.
Terrifying mountain roads aside, Emma liked Costa Rica more than Cartegenia. It’s still not a rich country, but it seems to be doing well. The largest industry, surprisingly, is in exporting computer chips. Literacy is at 97%. Virtually the entire country has electricity. And the economy is doing so well that the population of five million is boosted to six million by the one million Nicaraguans who have come over the border looking for work.
I figure Emma can get a bookkeeping job here. I even found a dentist she can work for.
That evening we compared notes with other guests. Everybody seems to have had a good day, including the people who toured the coffee plantation (who saw sloths in the wild, as well as an active volcano) and the 80 year-old zip liners, who saw their lives pass before their eyes.
The evenings entertainment was another production show, Route 66. This was a collection of songs from the 60s and 70s, during the heyday of Route 66, and was my second favourite show so far.
During the show I commented to Emma how much Adriana D’Aria Lomysh, the female lead vocalist, looks like Toni Petra from Nielsen. I’ll try to source some pictures so people who know Toni can make their own call. As for me, I’m wondering if her international trips for Nielsen aren’t really a cover for her second secret career as a cruise ship entertainer.
It'd be even better if you could source pictures of Toni as well. That way, those of us who don't know either of them can be the judge...
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