Dynamic Tourism, China, Business

Puerto Caldera
Day 5 we were in our first Costa Rican port, Puerto Caldera.  We had set up a tour through Charlie at Okey-Dokey Tours.  We thought ‘the Charlie’ was meeting us at the port, and a man who called himself Charlie did meet us; however, we were later somewhat skeptical as to whether our guide was actually Charlie.  It seems Charlie hires many look-a-likes to pretend they are him and give tours as ‘Charlie’ of Okey-Dokey Tours.

Regardless of whether of our guide was actually Charlie, we had a good excursion around Puerto Caldera.  The highlight of which was probably the Crocodile Canal Tour where we saw countless birds such as egrets, ibis, and a lot I don’t remember their names, iguanas, Jesus lizards that walk on water, and of course, crocodiles.  I was surprised how fast crocs can actually move if they want to.  Another fun activity was feeding the monkeys.  They weren’t scary monkeys like at Emei Shan in China but cute small monkeys, who very nervously came and took the bananas out of our hands.  We also had lunch at a beach-side restaurant that served ‘Viagra Soup’.  I don’t want to know what’s in that…

This day was a good introduction to Costa Rica, but the next Costa Rican port was even better.

Puerto Limon
Augustas Beckford a taxi driver in Puerto Limon, after getting off to a slow start, had a jammed packed day planned for us.   First we headed out to a zipline course and started there with a tour of the tropical rainforest we were going to be sailing over.  Going through the rainforest we saw beautiful flowers, poision dart frogs, a sloth.  Then we zipped from platform to platform more than 50feet above the ground below.  Woooosh.  After zooming across the tree tops, we went to the educational part of our trip: a tour through a banana plantation.  I had never been to a banana plantation before and it was very interesting to see the big bunches of bananas slide in on wires–banana ziplines!–be split, sorted, washed, dried, and packed.   It takes 3months from flowers to bananas and a banana tree only produces one set in its life.  The best looking bananas are shipped to the US while the worst are sent to markets in Honduras.  All these outdoor activities are making me thirsty.  Time to drink a fresh coconut; coconut water is the best natural Gatorade.  We drank our coconuts as we boarded another canal tour similar to the one in Puerto Caldera.  We saw many birds, a few monkeys, and a sloth.  Another scenic day in Costa Rica!