Tuesday 1st Dec. Limón

Well the day started badly. I have 4 large mosquito bites from the last stop in Panama Old Town. We had driven through the the new city which is spectacular I have to admit. Reynaldo, the hopeless guide, insisted we had one last look at the ruins of the first city on that site, of which there were just a few walls and a clock tower. The ruin is in the background, not Sandra of course, though how she managed a smile I don't know as we were both exhausted by that time. But what there was a lot of, was mosquitos and you could see them flying up from the grass as we walked over it.

As I said, the guide was useless, he had 41 of us queuing up in 81 degrees for one toilet. I wanted to punch him but Sandra, ever soft hearted gave him a tip and said thank you. Then I wanted to punch her.

Anyway we had learned yesterday that our trip to the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica had been cancelled and the shore excursion office was closed so we had to choose another excursion and leave the filled in booking form in a box on the desk. We chose a river ride and visit to a banana plantation.  There were 2 times offered, 7.15am, ridiculously early!  And 12.15pm, ideal!  When the tickets arrived in our cabin, we were booked on the earlier one and again the excursions office was closed. We both wanted to punch the excursions officer.  So we had an early night and ordered breakfast in our cabin to save time. Right well we are up to today now and the ship was delayed docking. Look at the ship's hull at the bottom.  Oops, who's a clumsy helmsman?

So nearly an hour later we climbed aboard the coach, set off and bang, there he was in a tree, a sloth. Got my camera out and the battery was dead. I wanted to punch myself. Not only that but I have only brought one part of the charger, so no photos today or for the rest of the cruise.  Punch, punch. Will have to use phone or iPad.

The guide, Alonso, was the opposite of Reynaldo, really knowledgeable and funny.  We arrived at the Tortuguero River which means, home of the turtle. Sadly the turtles were on their holidays as they only come here once a year to mate.  The downtown area of Limón is a shanty town. All low buildings as the earthquake of 1991. 7.5 on the Richter scale, destroyed most of the tall buildings yet miraculously there was only one fatality. Limón is not named after lemons but the local rock is limestone.

We arrived at the river and boarded a low boat with a canopy to protect us from the sun which by this time, 9.15am, was scorchio.  First thing we saw was another sloth high up in the canopy, in his typical hanging upside down pose. Alonso then gave us chapter and verse about sloths.  This is just some I remembered.  The name in Spanish is perezoso, lazy one, and there are two types, two toed and three toed on the hands only as both types have three toes on the feet.  The three toed has long arms and short legs and is ungainly at walking but good at swimming.  The two toed has arms and legs of similar length, good walker and poor swimmer, bearing in mind neither of them move about much anyway. Indeed they stay in the tree until they need to defaecate, when for some reason they descend but that's only once every three weeks or so. The three toed has algae in its fur and the two toed doesn't but I can't remember why.  It rains every night in the rainforest and the sloths can get wet and cold. When the sun comes out, they need to warm up or they may starve to death even though they have a full stomach. This is because their digestive system is very slow and they need the heat to get the digestive hormones working, I think that's what Alonso said. 

We also saw a large cayman in the water.  Apparently there are crocodiles too, up to 5 or 6 metres long, but no alligators. Sometimes a crocodile will find a swimmer and pull him under the water to drown him. However a croc often finds the human body too hard to bite, so it leaves it in the water to rot before trying again.  We saw a large green iguana  basking in a tree about a 100 feet up.  They call it the chicken of the trees.  The boat driver pulled into the shore, got off and came back with a tiny frog on a leaf, maybe an inch long, bright red with black dots.

 Can't remember it's name but the indigenous people used to collect the frogs and boil them up in a pan and dip their darts into the liquid as their skin gives off a deadly poison. No one wanted to pet it.  What else?  A couple of howler monkeys which were dark brown with a redder bit on their back. Alonso said he could tell it was a male because it had a long white scrotum but again I forget what the significance of that was.  There are also capuchin and spider monkeys in the rainforest but we didn't spot any of those.  We saw a green lizard with a big ruff round its neck, a Jesus Christ lizard, so called because it looks as if it runs across the surface of the water, and blue butterflies. Oh yes and three more sloths so I am very happy.  We saw lots of birds, kingfishers, a tiger heron which is grey but the juveniles are striped like a tiger, a blue heron, snow egrets, a large flock of parakeets, toucans and lots of little swallows darted backwards and forwards near the boat, picking off the mosquitoes which were attracted by our smell. But today I was ready for them, the little beggars.

Alonso said there were over 900 species of fish in the river and surrounding waterways, both salt water and fresh water as the mangrove swamp floods with sea water for 12 hours everyday. There were water hyacinth floating everywhere and beautiful white spider lillies. He rattled off the names of trees like mangroves, golden coconut, eucalyptus, raffia palm, bloodwood, balsa wood tree etc etc. as well as banana, more of which later. 

An interesting mangrove tree with huge aerial roots.

After an hour and a half on the river we returned to the jetty. Sandra and I were at the back of the boat, so last off. There were big people, old people, people with walking sticks etc struggling but when Sandra started to get off, the driver got a stool for her to descend on to.  We don't know why.

Slices of fresh pineapple and a glass of the local beer, Aguila, were very welcome. I was so happy I had seen sloths that I bought a teeshirt with a sloth face on it and Costa Rica's motto. Pura Vida -pure/natural life. I also like the idea of live slow.

On to the banana plantation owned by Del Monte.  A surprisingly small factory. There are 150 varieties of banana and none is indigenous to Costa Rica so the local monkeys don't eat them.  They were brought from Asia by the Chinese railroad workers who planted them by the railroads for food. A plant takes 9 months from a shoot sprouting to produce a bunch of bananas. It doesn't produce anymore but sends up new shoots and the process begins again. The flower comes first and attached to that are tiny rows of female bananas, rows of hermaphrodite bananas and male bananas. The male bananas only contain pollen so they are cut off as being useless.  I'm saying nothing.  As the other bananas grow into a bunch, they are covered in perforated blue plastic bags for 2 purposes.  1. To heat them up and kill off scorpions, spiders and snakes and 2. to stop them falling to the ground as the bunches grow to over a metre long and can contain over a hundred bananas.

They are cut down green, sprayed with hose pipes to get rid of insects and we saw a big spider come out, cut into hands and dunked in water to cool and clean them. Women wash and sort the hands and they are packed into boxes and load onto refrigerated container lorries.  The whole process takes maybe 10  - 15 minutes.

Back on the coach and Alonso passes round samples of coffee bean branches, red flowers which are used to make the food dye annatto (?), a cocoa bean pod and finally a bunch of mini bananas which we all scoff and declare delicious.  Half way down the coach he says these are only for looking at, not eating.  Just joking, I hope!

Sandra decides to re enact that favourite old song "Yes, we have no bananas!"

He gives us a few details about life in Costa Rica.  People are categorised as in Panama. The army was disbanded, can't remember when, so there is no military. The people decided that if they didn't need to buy uniforms for the military they would buy them for their children. So all children must go to school, it's free, and they all have a free uniform.  And Christpher Columbus came here in 1502 but didn't find any gold.

I absolutely loved today. Completely made up for yesterday, though I am still going to punch the cruise director when I see him.

A couple of hours relaxing on the super padded sun beds and the Island Princess sails away into the sunset for Jamaica. We have a day at sea tomorrow and no doubt Sandra and I will definitely be going to the gym without fail. After all, we have brought our exercise clothes and trainers with us and it would be silly to bring them half way round the globe and not use them, wouldn't it?

Tonight the Love Boat Disco under the stars is happening. Can we keep awake?

At the disco.  Hello sailor!

Just got back from the disco but first I've got to say that the Head Waiter, Moises from Portugal, turns out to be a really nice man. We have a chat with him every evening and he is married to an English girl from Swadlingcote(?).  He is hilarious and dances all the time. Lovely dinner so we decide to round it off with a bit of dancing at the disco under the stars. Great fun, - Up Town Funk, Blame it on the Boogie, Satisfaction etc. Thought we would take a cup of tea to bed so down to the buffet. There I am, making my tea when a deep American voice behind me says "Tea, huh?"  "Yes," I say, "I'm English," (what a dopey thing to say). "Hey, Danny, get over here.  This lady is English and having tea,"  he announces as if I'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Danny ambles over.  "Really?"  he says, clearly impressed. "Nice dress," says he, leaning in. "Thanks" , says I and scuttles off.  Sandra is laughing like a drain.