2017.01.07 Puerto Limon, Costa Rica

By chance of a hurricane damaging his ship, Christopher Columbus was forced to drop anchor near today’s Puerto Limon and explore the land while awaiting repairs. This is the island that he landed on and took small boats into Puerto Limon.

 

He described a place where he had seen “more gold in two days than he had seen in four years in Spain”, calling it the “Rich Coast”. After the return from his voyage, he asked the Spanish Crown to sanction him as the governor of Costa Rica. Instead, the seat was given to a rival who, after several failed expeditions declared the place to be “the poorest and most miserable in all the Americas,” a starkly different description. It was only after Costa Rica fought and won its independence from Spain in 1821 that its true riches were revealed: land fertile or growing coffee. Eventually becoming the country’s largest income generator, Puerto Limon would become the main port for the exporting of coffee, making the country the wealthiest in the region. Here is what coffee beans look like. The red ones are the ripe ones. The coffee in Costa Rica is picked by hand and they only use the red beans, making it a very unique coffee.

More recently, technology has become the number one economy driver, beating tourism, pineapples, bananas and coffee. In terms of technology they export chips and have call centers located here. The government has made a large effort to preserve Costa Rica’s natural habitat as ecotourism and it is slowly becoming the driving force for most visitors. Currently rated as the greenest country in the world, Costa Rica has announced its plans to become 100 percent carbon neutral by the year 2030 and is well on its way.

Some of the attractions here include cashew wine, zip lining, horseback riding along the beach and cuddling up with some sloths and seeing all that nature has to offer. Zip lining is said to be started here by the banana farmers. When they would pick the bananas they would put the bags on a line and someone in the front would have to pull the line to the main collection center. They rigged a seat and line to hold on to and then ran and jumped on and pulled all the bags with them, hence the first zip line. Talking about bananas they explained that the flowers that come out are the female portion and the red leaves are the male. There is no pollination so the male leaves are useless and should be pulled off. Also they say to only let one shoot at a time come off of the banana. They put blue or white bags around the bunches as a mini greenhouse, so all the bananas will ripen at the same time. Here is what a banana planting looks like.

We took an aerial tram tour of the rain forest. It was very interesting, though very high. The bus trip to the rainforest was about two hours. Along the way we saw a lot of the countryside. Here is our guide Adrian, a local who spoke excellent English.

Here are some pictures of the trip to the rainforest.

Costa Rica has 110 volcanos, some being under the ocean; however, only seven of them are active. Along our drive we did see one in the distance spouting out black ash. The volcanos here do not have lava, just rocks and ash.

When we got to the rainforest, they first showed us some Timor, a relative of the rhino. Here is one of them.

Then we boarded the tram. There were six seats, two abreast and the guide sat in the back. We sat in the third row of seats. It was not as bad as I expected and I really enjoyed it. It was so beautiful.

 I cannot post all the pictures we took, but hopefully this gives you some idea of what we saw. We started low in the forest and then finished up at the top of the canopy.

Besides all the foliage there are many insects and animals in the forest. One of them is the very poisonous viper. We saw two of them, and this is one of them. They are no big, but apparently very deadly.

Lastly, I will end with a beautiful orchid.