BAD NEWS: My computer does not seem to be turning on….. will try to work on it more tonight. I will take a computer home from work too. Well, my computer is turning on, but the screen is black. I put a screensaver on it last night while the youtube video was loading. I put it in “Sleep” mode and it didn’t awake today.
It was really easy to wake up early in San Jose. We really went to bed around 8 p.m. and woke up around 6 a.m. We were able to get basic U.S. channels live from Miami. I was impressed that the same shows are on there as home and they aren’t behind any seasons. Since it is from Miami, the shows were on 2 hours ahead of Florida time as we were 2 hours behind the Eastern time zone. Prime time TV is over by 9 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. which helps.
Day 2 – We had a small breakfast at the hotel and then, the tour stopped for breakfast on Day 2 also. At the breakfast stop, we also were surprised with viewing crocodiles along a river.
Most tours stop at tourist shops and this tour was no different. We stopped at a store before the beach. I bought a beach towel with the Costa Rican money on it. We made it to Manuel Antonio National Park. It is the smallest of the national parks in Costa Rica. It is also the most visited. I think it is visited due to the beaches and the monkeys! If you don’t like monkeys, you don’t need to take the time to watch the video as there are too many pictures of monkeys.
Costa Rica has .1% of the world’s land, but it has 5 to 6% of the world’s biodiversity. I am not 100% sure, but I think around 25% of Costa Rica is protected land.
We had about 3 hours at the park to explore. Andrea and I walked to a few viewpoints. There were so many lizards — large lizards — probably iguanas actually… — 1000 times the size of the little Florida lizard. They were always well camouflaged. I walked near at least two without seeing them. We saw a little marmot, but we mostly just saw iguanas and monkeys. We heard a monkey in distress as we were leaving the park. Someone mentioned the monkey became lost and was trying to signal for his pack. The tour guide said that we had just missed a sloth.
We walked to a hotel for dinner. The tours were really nice. We had breakfast, a packed lunch, and dinner. As we were eating dessert, a toucan was spotted. We rushed out to take pictures. I think there were two toucans actually. I used my new camera a lot. I also took a point and shoot camera. An American on the tour was using his I-phone to take pictures of the toucan and was really impressed at my pictures.
We arrived home and went to the grocery store. The store sold coconuts with straws. It was nice having the coconut water from real coconuts. I had a lot of black cherry pop and arroz con leche. The rice with milk has cinnamon and spices in it and is much like what I ate growing up. We also tried other fruit including a papaya and a passion fruit. We had a lot of different fruit juices like guava.
We met various people on the tours and saw them at the tourist sites and other tours throughout the week. I guess maybe a decade ago Costa Rica had about 25,000 tourists. Today, nearly 2.5 million tourists go to Costa Rica per year. Everyone was really nice to us. From the pickup to the airport, to the hotel, to the tours, we felt really safe. We didn’t do anything really by ourselves, but we did walk alone on paths in the national park which could be dangerous. We met a couple who had rented a car. I think that could have potential for scams and danger. I think on Day 2 we were re-routed as there was a fatal car accident and it would take 5 hours to clear the accident. Drivers were more reckless than in the United States when in came to passing, etc.