Day 45 24.08.15
On our traveling day to San Jose, we decided to leave La Fortuna at 12:00 in order to pack in some more activities in the morning. For example we got up at 06:00 am to go on a proper nature hike. It was some well spent money!
First we drove to a spot to see toucans. We saw a large group of them feeding off these large two trees. It was quite interesting, and every so often you would hear a loud “ploing” where some fruit that they were holding in their beaks would fall out and hit the ground or the shed underneath their tree.
They try to open the fruit, extract the pulp from it and then let the seed drop to the floor. Our guide, who was excellent at spotting all sorts of animals by the way, picked one of these fruits up and showed us just how little pulp there was on these fruit.
He used a telescope for us to spot these different animals, and we could even take pretty decent photos using this device. For example the image of the sloth came out great. He had seen the sloth wrapped around the tree and when he made the sound of an eagle, the sloth instantly sat up and checked where the noise was coming from. Especially considering how slow they normally move around, this sudden movement was something we hadn’t seen before – and it was also my very first sloth in the wild.
The rain just started to pick up again when we found our next sloth, and unfortunately this meant that it “ran / climbed” to safety, as lowly but quickly as you can imagine. We weren’t quick enough to get the telescope out in the safety of the car boot door in time to take enough pictures, but I got a small video. We saw another sloth cowering on a branch sleeping away the rain.
There are different types of sloths; the ones we saw were one with 3 claws, and one with 2 claws. They have different patterns on their backs and apparently different incubation times for their young during pregnancy.
Next we drove to the house of our guide to get a little shelter from the rain. The others had their first coffee and I nibbled on some cookies. Meanwhile the guides son took out some bananas and stuck them on different branches, acting like a “natural” bird feeder, and soon loads of birds came flocking towards the guides balcony. The bananas must have been so attractive that even the rain wasn’t holding them back anymore. We saw some lovely specimen of black birds with red tail feathers, some larger yellow birds and some light blue ones.
My favourite however was a dark green / blue coloured one that was hopping up and down the branches of the bird feeder.
Furthermore we saw some Jesus Christ lizards, which are called this way as they can walk on water. The lizard also came to the bird feeder and stole a little bit of banana. It is quite an exuberant lizard and at first I thought it was a chameleon.
We also had a little humming bird taking shelter from the rain on the porch, which let us come very close to take pictures. Our guide said he would come to him often and they would have long chats.
We moved on to a frog garden close to his hut and got to see the typical image of any Costa Rican post card – the red eyed green frog. These little creatures are too cute. Their little legs with bubble like toes, too cute. I am sorry for the poor image, my other camera run out of battery and I had to resort to my go pro..
We also got to see a poisonous frog, one they call the blue jeaned frog. This is because his little legs are blue looking like he is wearing jeans.
We then were lead around on a project our guide has been doing for quite some years now, building a trek for the disabled with pathways wide enough for wheelchairs. This little trek was quite impressive with a lake, proper jungle, the frog garden, a tunnel, where the plants had overgrown and shaped the path like a tunnel. He spoke very enthusiastic of his trek with many many ideas for the future.
He even went on to show us some alligators, however due to the rain they stayed below the surface and unfortunately we couldn’t see any. (But we had seen so many animals for one morning, that didn’t bother us too much :) )
We headed back to the hotel, and had breakfast with the couple that was leaving us today. We went back to the same bakery shop, this time indulging a large pizza baguette. I didn’t feel like “quickly” going to see a waterfall before our departure at 12:00 and so I just stayed in the hotel, relaxing and packing my bags for the journey to San Jose.
We got onto the bus and headed on. We arrived there after what seemed one of our shortest journeys. San Jose is a large city like any other cities. It was just strange to arrive in a large city after not really having been in one since Mexico City. A city that one could have seen in Europe too, nothing special – places to shop, a long shopping avenue, some older buildings, hardly any colonial styled buildings and a lovely little indoor market.
After arriving I posted my postcards in a lovely old building (one of the few I saw) and this time didn’t need to worry about the space on the postcards, seeing as there was only one stamp with the exact amount on it.
I headed over to the bank and managed to cash in my two other travellers cheques :) :). AND I got back the amount I wanted in dollars. Great bank! I think I would have been able to exchange travellers cheques into dollars in pretty much any country, you just need to bring your passport and a little bit of time and then it should work. If it’s not the first bank you go to, it will most likely be the second one.
Some of us staying on the next day (the three amigos and another person from the old group) also bought concert tickets for the next day at the national theatre for a calypso band.
We also went to a sports bar on the second floor, over the main shops, and enjoyed the view as well as watching a beautiful sunset turning the clouds into paintings. It was one of these healthy bars (which I haven’t really seen travelling yet), where you get juices in all kinds of combination.
I chose a juice with avocado, apple, carrot and a vegetable called remolacha. I was trying to remember what vegetable that was, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. When the juice arrived I knew – beetroot. As no other ingredient was red and the whole thing tasted slightly bitter…. it was definitely beetroot. The taste wasn’t too bad though :).
For our farewell dinner we went to a Thai / Chinese / Indian restaurant. The atmosphere was very cosy and it was a great way to spend our last moments together. The food though, the food was exceptional!
For a starter I had some potstickers (or Gyoza as you would call them in Japanese cuisine) and for my main I had some Pad Thai. The noodles were great too and the portion was so large that you really felt warm and fuzzy full after the meal.
We all said our farewells and speeches were held, appreciating the great time we had with each other. We even took a group picture and then it was time to head back to the hotel.
Some of us didn’t want the night to end there and headed out to a great place to listen to Jazz music.
Today was Blues night though and so we all sat in this little tiny garage, sitting a metre away from the stage and listened to the musicians. It was a nice way to unwind, but soon headed back to bed.
