Saturday:
Spanish Level: I thought my tour was going to be in two languages but everyone on my trip spoke English; therefore, I didn’t get to practice much Spanish this weekend…
This morning I took an overnight tour to the Atlantic/Carribean side of Costa Rica to a town called Tortuguero with hotel Mawamba. On the tour there was a couple from Mexico who own a travel agency, a Costa Rican older man who owns a Rental Car office in San Jose, and a single mom with her son from the US. We took a bus across the Continental Divide to the East (I thought that was cool). Our guide Jorge was awesome!! He talked about Primary and Secondary forests and he knew all sorts of information about the plants of Costa Rica and medicinal uses. He had cured his wife of flebitis in her legs with plants and knew what plants helped diabetes etc. Come to find out he used to be a guide in the primary forest and would take people from National Geographic and scientist for drug companies etc. into the forest for weeks looking for plants and animals. Sadly, he had a motorcycle accident and lost his leg, he had a limp but you’d never know he had a wooden leg, because of this he is now a tourist guide. The bus trip to Tortuguero is about 4 hours with 1.5hrs on a bumpy dirt road. They call dirt roads on tours "free costa rican massages". To break up the trip we stopped for lunch and then at a banana plantation.
The banana plantation was pretty interesting. The workers care for the bananas until they are ready to harvest, each banana stalk produces one time only about 75 bananas and it takes about 5 months. They put plastic bags over the bananas for protection and to create a micro climate to speed up the process. When the bananas are ready, a worker cuts the entire stalk and hangs it on this track and pulley system they have in the fields, a man ties the end of the rope full of about 50-70 banana stalks around his waist and RUNS with it to the processing plant where they sort wash and pack the bananas. I think they have a job opening for this job and I definately would loose weight at the same time... but I think Ill pass.
We continued on the dirt road to a dock where we boarded a covered speed boat for an hour long ride up the canals to the hotel. The canals were wonderful. I felt like I was in "The Jungle Book" the vegetation/foliage here is different than other locations I have visited. It is really lush forest here and there are manatee and crocodiles in the water. We arrived to the hotel got settled in and then went on a little tour of Tortuguero. The town is on a strip of land between the ocean and a canal and because of the zoning regulations land here is not legally owned by anyone but there are people living here and paying mortgages for papers that wouldn’t hold up in court. A doctor and nurse visits the town once a month and school here is for fewer years than anywhere else in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has something like a 94% literacy rate, education is mandatory here for 10 years. The town had a hostile, a few B&B’s, a couple of souvenir shops, a few stores, a discotheque, a tour agency and some small houses.
We walked from the town back to the hotel along a path that passed behind another resort and the CCC conservation project, we took 10 steps off the path to the right and we were on the beach. We looked at some nests for Green Sea Turtles, it is the end of mating season. They swim off for years and return to the same spot to lay their eggs. We saw a few tracks of some moms who had been there last night to lay eggs and a lot of track of babies who had hatched that morning. It takes about 3 months for the eggs to hatch so now is the time you could see some babies but they are very protected and not many people are allowed on the beach in the mornings or nights to see them.
Spanish Level: I thought my tour was going to be in two languages but everyone on my trip spoke English; therefore, I didn’t get to practice much Spanish this weekend…
This morning I took an overnight tour to the Atlantic/Carribean side of Costa Rica to a town called Tortuguero with hotel Mawamba. On the tour there was a couple from Mexico who own a travel agency, a Costa Rican older man who owns a Rental Car office in San Jose, and a single mom with her son from the US. We took a bus across the Continental Divide to the East (I thought that was cool). Our guide Jorge was awesome!! He talked about Primary and Secondary forests and he knew all sorts of information about the plants of Costa Rica and medicinal uses. He had cured his wife of flebitis in her legs with plants and knew what plants helped diabetes etc. Come to find out he used to be a guide in the primary forest and would take people from National Geographic and scientist for drug companies etc. into the forest for weeks looking for plants and animals. Sadly, he had a motorcycle accident and lost his leg, he had a limp but you’d never know he had a wooden leg, because of this he is now a tourist guide. The bus trip to Tortuguero is about 4 hours with 1.5hrs on a bumpy dirt road. They call dirt roads on tours "free costa rican massages". To break up the trip we stopped for lunch and then at a banana plantation.
The banana plantation was pretty interesting. The workers care for the bananas until they are ready to harvest, each banana stalk produces one time only about 75 bananas and it takes about 5 months. They put plastic bags over the bananas for protection and to create a micro climate to speed up the process. When the bananas are ready, a worker cuts the entire stalk and hangs it on this track and pulley system they have in the fields, a man ties the end of the rope full of about 50-70 banana stalks around his waist and RUNS with it to the processing plant where they sort wash and pack the bananas. I think they have a job opening for this job and I definately would loose weight at the same time... but I think Ill pass.
We continued on the dirt road to a dock where we boarded a covered speed boat for an hour long ride up the canals to the hotel. The canals were wonderful. I felt like I was in "The Jungle Book" the vegetation/foliage here is different than other locations I have visited. It is really lush forest here and there are manatee and crocodiles in the water. We arrived to the hotel got settled in and then went on a little tour of Tortuguero. The town is on a strip of land between the ocean and a canal and because of the zoning regulations land here is not legally owned by anyone but there are people living here and paying mortgages for papers that wouldn’t hold up in court. A doctor and nurse visits the town once a month and school here is for fewer years than anywhere else in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has something like a 94% literacy rate, education is mandatory here for 10 years. The town had a hostile, a few B&B’s, a couple of souvenir shops, a few stores, a discotheque, a tour agency and some small houses.
We walked from the town back to the hotel along a path that passed behind another resort and the CCC conservation project, we took 10 steps off the path to the right and we were on the beach. We looked at some nests for Green Sea Turtles, it is the end of mating season. They swim off for years and return to the same spot to lay their eggs. We saw a few tracks of some moms who had been there last night to lay eggs and a lot of track of babies who had hatched that morning. It takes about 3 months for the eggs to hatch so now is the time you could see some babies but they are very protected and not many people are allowed on the beach in the mornings or nights to see them.
posted by GA_Peach | 7:29 PM
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