We had
an awesome dinner at the Turrialtico Lodge. At the time
that we sat to eat, we were the only guests at the lodge.
By 9pm, there were 5 more couples at dinner. I had
"lomito" (fillet mignon) with mushroom sauce and it was
fantastic; perhaps the best that I have ever had anywhere,
including France. We rolled out the next morning headed
toward the Caribbean Ocean. We went through the mountains
and then descended to
the Caribbean plain.
The photos below are what we saw.
We found a visitor on our
bathroom floor. Some centipedes have venomous stingers on their feet. This one
appeared to have additional stingers on his rear.
In the morning we got a
clear view of the
city of Turrialba
in the valley
below the lodge. The Turrialba volcano remained hidden by clouds.
Central America has a
number of sites with large spherical stones that were carved by the Meso-American natives
a thousand years
ago. I don't know if this one is an original or a
knock-off. But it either case, it is still
interesting.
Our view from the second
floor of the lodge
gave us a
nice sense of the scope of the
valley to the west of Turriabla. There is a
substantial lake there in addition to a sugar cane
processing plant.
The wall at the lodge had a nice 3D topographic
map for the whole
country.
It showed our
path would be through the
high mountains and then down to the coastal
plains.
Kathleen and I met the
founder/owner of the lodge and spoke with him at length.
A very nice fellow with some English
skills. But, when combined with my marginal Spanish skills it produced
a usable result.
He feeds
the
birds daily and hangs around to watch them
eat. I cropped one of the photos to get
a shot of this bird in
flight. The bird was strong enough
to fly away with a whole banana.
The birds have bright
yellow tails and
sharp orange beaks.
Once the bird had finished eating the
whole banana, it came back for more.
The bird could easily see
me and kept careful
watch. If I got
closer than about 10 feet, he flew away.
We passed many small
road-side fires along the highways we traveled. I assume
they were the result of someone tossing a cigarette out the
window. But what was surprising was that there was no
response to the
fire. We never
saw a fire engine attacking any fire; no one seemed to
care.
The road to Puerto Limon
was heavily traveled and rough. Limon is Costa Rica's major Caribbean
port and sees high
volume traffic of container shipments. There were
plenty of trucks in Limon.
The odd device is a
container mover. It grips containers from above and
picks them up. Sadly, the main portion was blocked by
the building in the foreground.
Our path took us right
next to the small airfield at Limon. The fence to
protect the runway had been broken down and you could walk
right onto the tarmac if you wanted. I stopped to get a
photo of the surf and a small place came by preparing to take off.
From the airstrip, we
could see one of the container ships that makes the run to
Limon at anchor in the bay.
We traveled on the rough road south toward Puerto Viejo and saw this fellow
riding his bike
with cargo. When you have a long distance to travel and a
bike is
the only means of transportation, you do what
you have to do.
We pulled over just north of Puerto
Viejo to check out the bay. The beaches are black
volcanic sand.
Kathleen choose a place
called the Cariblue
and they had an open bungalow, so we took it.
Outside of our bungalow I
spotted this odd spider. The web was large, perhaps 3
feet across.
This large flower was in bloom in the brush
outside our bungalow.
I have to assume after
seeing a number of these spiders that they are common.
We put on bathing suits and headed to the
beach across the street from our place. Sophomoric
trick #101: when
at beach you
encounter a girl with her top undone, spill or drop
something on her to cause her to react strongly enough
to forget that her top is undone. The fellow
next to this girl attempted #101, but failed to
generate an immediate response because she was
dozing. The "thing" is some kind of
dead lobster with long antennae.
When she awoke enough to realize what was
happening, she asked her girlfriend to assist her,
which she did. Note the smirk on the face of 3rd
gal on the right.
Across the road from the
beach was a typical beach bar for this area: thatched roof, open air with tables and
chairs loaded with surfer-types.
Kathleen was pleased by
the temperature of the water but did not venture too far into it due to the
very strong rip
currents.
Words alone cannot express
my happiness at not having to view white, bulging, cellulite-dimpled legs of aging gringas on the
beach.
This couple came strolling
by after being in the surf.
And speaking of surf,
there were plenty of folks trying their luck in the waves.
The waves were steady and
seemingly had good form.
This guy was getting a good ride.
This guy
was pretty good.
Note the
nice turn.
We went
to the beach bar for a drink, but the service sucked and they
did not have the food that we wanted, so we left.
We went
back to the hotel instead and had cocktails at the swim-up bar.
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Photos and Text Copyright Bill Caid 2014, all rights
reserved.
For your enjoyment only, not for commercial use.