Puntarenas, Costa Rica

 

We landed in Puntarenas at 10:00 am.  We could have landed earlier and were scheduled to land earlier but the harbormaster had requested the later landing because of tides.  We had scheduled a horseback ride with the ship shore excursions and the timing on that was changed to match the later arrival.  That is one advantage of scheduling with the ship.  They take care of the changes that are going to occur, apparently quite often on this trip. 

Six of us gathered at the bottom of the gangway onto the pier under a canopy set up for guests to be in the shade as they awaited their tour.  Six is generally the minimum for an Oceania tour so we had just enough.  We boarded the bus and the tour guide began a spiel about our visit to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica.  One of our tour members interrupted and said, “I think we are on the wrong tour.”  The surprised guide pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket, looked at it, and changed his spiel.  Still not sure if he was trying to be funny, or if he was genuinely surprised to find out we were on the horseback riding tour.

As is usually the case on these tours we learned many little tidbits of information.  Costa Rica is slightly smaller than West Virginia in the US and Nova Scotia in Canada.  55% of the population is in and around the capital city.  10% of the population are immigrants from Nicaragua.  If the US had 10% of its population as immigrants from one country that would equal about 34 million immigrants.  30% of the income of Costa Rica comes from tourism.  Costa Rica covers approximately .07 % of the world’s land mass, but contains 6% of the worlds plant and  animal species.  Costa Rica is celebrating their bicentennial this year, and they have no armed services.  None.  Zero.  Wow.

We drove for about an hour to get to our experience.  Before mounting the horses we were treated  to some biodiversity.  We saw a pair of scarlet macaws in a nearby tree.  They mate for life so are almost always seen in twos.  We saw a lizard similar to an Iguana called a Ctenosaura.  He was on the roof and he raised his head up and down.  Our guide said he was a male and that the females move their heads from side to side.   That would be nodding yes for males, and no for females.  This, it turns out, may actually be true.   It decided to pour rain so we waited for the short downpour to stop before mounting our rides.  Nice two step platform to make getting on very easy.  We boarded the horses and took off on our ride.  It turns out we were on a cattle farm.  We rode for about an hour while it poured rain on and off.  It is a rain forest, after all.  We were soaked, but it was like a nice summer rain.  We were not cold until we got back on the air conditioned bus.

An hour ride back to the boat.  There was a small band and human sized puppets to greet us on the pier.  Didn’t happen to take a picture of that.  They are using a new system of facial recognition when leaving and returning to the ship.  I got the red “talk to an attendant” result which meant that they have a few bugs to work out. 

Nice sunset tonight.  Another grueling day survived by the intrepid couple.  It was in the 80’s again today.