Wednesday Down to the pool again this morning. Did our exercises while wandering around in the pool. We met up with Diego & Wanita at breakfast. Names have been changed to protect Canadians. Organized ourselves and off to Palo Verda for our tour. Left at about 1 o’clock for our tour Tardes Guanacasta. A boat tour on the Palo Verde River, then to a ranch for authentic Guanacasta stuff. Off we went on a little tour bus and picked up more people along the way. We drove for about a half an hour and made a stop for the bathroom and souvenirs and more tourists. Then we drove for about an hour to get to the ranch and along the way we had a Costa Rican massage. Going over a very bumpy road at about 50 miles an hour. Not bad. We stopped so our guide could run across the road and grab something from a tree. He came back with a cashew- still in its green pod and the flower on the end. They make juice from the flower. We stopped at the ranch to use the facilities and have some juice and some fresh fruit then on to the river. The last hundred yards of the drive was very slow because there was a big iguana in the way and he walked right down the middle of the path. Onto the boat and get ready for tour except right across the river was some white face capuchin monkeys. So we watched them for about 10 minutes as they came down and drank from the river. They were very aware that there were crocodiles in river so they were very skittish when they got close to the waters edge. Everybody took tons of pictures. And on the other side of the river were howler monkeys. But they look like black blobs in the trees. Onward down the river looking at tons of crocodiles big and little, and birds and bats and iguanas and the Jesus Christ iguana. They little iguana is called the Jesus Christ iguana because it runs across water when frightened. We frightened one just to watch it run across the water away from the crocodile that was watching it. We took about an hour on this boat tour, it was very similar to the boat tours we took in the Amazon. Only less humid.
Back on land where everybody chased a big iguana do they could take pictures of him. Me too. Then on the bus and back to the ranch. Once back at the ranch we were given fruit juice to drink and a lady started to explain about the Guanacaste area and their traditions. She tried to teach a couple of the guys how to dance didn’t work out that good. She gave up on that and invited us to have a barbeque, we had beef skewers, chicken, potatoes, fresh made tortillas and very delicious pico de gallo. The food was excellent. Then came the masquerade parade bunch of people with very tall costumes on. Which costume was about 15 feet high with wavy arms and papier-mâché heads. And a band follow them playing loud and rowdy music. We followed him down to the bowl ring and got situated waiting for the bull riders. We saw some traditional dancing in between some of the bull rides. We also saw a couple of horses doing fancy footwork across the ring. One of the bulls decided he had enough and he tried to jump over the tall stone fence, didn’t quite make it, he stayed inside and eventually went in the shoot where he was supposed to go after he chased the Cowboys around the ring. We were given some traditional corn on the cob and then some shaved ice and back on the little bus back toward the hotel. A long drive in the dark over a bumpy road to get another Costa Rican massage. We dropped off the passengers we had picked up along the way and then made our way back to our hotel. We dropped our stuff in the room and headed over to get some supper, I don’t know why, we ate two hours ago. We changed some of our money to get smaller bills and then headed to the bar. Another good day.
Cashew
