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Panamá / Costa Rica

One thing that's been very notable in Latin America is bright colors! Here's a selection from several countries:


Costa Rica's brightly colored buses!



ok the last one is cheating because the tinted window of the taxi made the Panamá City scene look purple, but somehow it works.


So many colors, especially near the equator where the sun is bright and nature is colorful, too. (adorable frog not my photo)


We spent only 3 days in Panamá, all in

the city. Saw the canal - super cool - and learned all about it in an IMAX documentary at the Miraflores Lock Visitors Center, narrated by Morgan Freeman.

The Ruby Ace pictured above came from Yokohama with 5,000-6,000 cars from Japan; the fee to transit the canal was $400,000USD in cash paid 8 hours before they arrived, plus the fee for the canal pilot who stays with the ship throughout the transit. It takes approximately 40 hours to cross Panamá; only 10-12 hours is spent in motion, the rest is waiting at locks, 3 on each side.


People have wanted to be able to cross through Panamá from ocean to ocean since the Spanish arrived in the 1500's. It was 400 years before good old American ingenuity (and money and political will/power) made it happen. The French had built the Suez Canal and were put in charge of creating the Panamá Canal in 1882. The jungle terrain, malaria and yellow fever killing the workers, and the raging river that ran through Panamá made the task seemingly impossible. The project went bankrupt and was abandoned in 1889. An American team took over the project in 1904: three main aspects led to success - deciding to dam the river to create Lake Gatún, creating a lock system, and the scientific breakthrough in 1897 by Nobel Prize-winner Ronald Ross that mosquitos carried disease - not "vapors" in bad air - so the workers died in significantly fewer numbers.


The canal opened on August 15, 1914 to little if no fanfare... it coincidentally being the day that WWI started. The US controlled the canal until President Carter signed a treaty in 1977 giving it to Panamá. In 2006 as the era of the super tanker was well underway - those gigantic ships couldn't transit - a referendum was passed to enlarge the canal. The project took 12 years and doubled the canal's capacity. Currently Panamá is experiencing a lengthy drought made worse by an El Niño year, causing the level of Gatún Lake to drop; canal capacity has dropped by 40%.


We didn't go to Panamá City colonial old town, didn't go to the fish market. It's possible that 9-1/2 months of travel are beginning to take a bit of a toll. We've seen lots of old towns and lots of fish markets. So we mostly hung out by the lovely pool which had a fantastic view of my new favorite skyscraper!


Also got to watch these guys pruning the palm trees:


And there was a nice outdoor bar area surrounded by palms. I have a hard time with the hot hot hot equatorial days but I love the warm breezy nights:


I'm sure there was a lot more to see and do, including Panamá's over 1,000 islands on both coasts, but we moved on to Costa Rica, pura vida!

The phrase "Pura Vida" was taken from a 1956 Mexican movie in which the main character, a dufus comedian, gets into a variety of scrapes; his optimistic catch phrase each time he narrowly escapes tragedy is "pura vida!". The Costa Ricans - called Ticos because they add the diminutive "tico" to words - adopted the phrase for their own. It means hello, good-bye, great to see you, beautiful, terrific, have a good day, everything's great, no problem, c'est la vie... and more, depending on the context. A fun phrase!


We flew to San Jose and stayed a couple of nights at a groovy little hotel near a big park. An interesting mix of guests, a mid-century modern vibe and, as they say, a great value!


Abram found a laundromat at a Walmart (Walmart!) while I went downtown to the National Museum of Costa Rica and the Jade Museum; also wandered the downtown streets a bit. The National Museum is located in a former army barracks...


...and the entrance opens into a butterfly and bird garden.

They had an excellent selection of historical items, including a large segment on Costa Rica disbanding its army in 1949 and the civil war in the 1940's.


The Jade Museum contained an incredible selection of jade (no surprise) and also several nicely-done exhibitions of pre-Columbian art and CR life.


San Jose isn't a super picturesque city but the people are very nice and friendly and it does have a fun vibe. Here are a few things I saw on my short ramble downtown, including a couple of excellent street musicians:

These guys were having fun!


The next day we picked up a car and headed southwest to visit my best friend from high school, who remains one of my best friends (lucky us!), and her husband, who had rented a house on the lovely Playa Zancudo on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, near Panamá. En route we stayed one night in Uvita, a small town known for its big annual music festival. Very chill surf vibe, felt a bit like Tulúm, Mexico 40 years ago.


Playa Zancudo is a nine-mile-long dark sand beach on the Golfe Dulce.


It's also a top big-game sport fishing spot in the world, with the Zancudo Lodge just down the road. Quite a scene with all the fishing bros (and one woman) hanging out. A fancy resort, everyone eats dinner together at 6:00 - excellent dinner with the freshest fish ever! - bar closes at 7:30: they go out at 5:00am to fish.


We went down to the dock where the fishing boats come in every afternoon with their catch. We'd been told there was a daily feeding frenzy of birds and caimans. Lots of birds and a few caimans, but the big reptile lounging near us could barely be bothered to chomp on the fish that were tossed directly to him!


Here's Patti and me yuckin' it up like we have for over half a century. That's kinda crazy!


After leaving Zancudo, we headed north towards Puntarenas to catch a ferry over to the Nicoya Peninsula. On the way we spent a night in the small town of Quepos, which is backed up to the Parque Manuel Antonio, the most popular national park in Costa Rica. Over 160,000 people visit it annually to see the flora and especially the fauna, and enjoy its beautiful beaches; we decided not to brave the crowds and kept on our journey to the ferry.


Abram had a snorkel trip booked out of the little town Montezuma on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. The peninsula has had a lot of buzz in the past few years due to being named one of the 5 Blue Zones in the world. https://www.bluezones.com/


On this map, Nicoya Peninsula is in the upper left; Montezuma is on the peninsula down near Capo Blanco. Playa Zancudo is at the southern end of the Golfo Dulce, across from the southern tip of the Oso Peninsula, near the Panama border. Lake Arenal, Volcano Arenal and the city La Fortuna, which we visited after Montezuma, are in north-central Costa Rica.


The Nicoya Peninsula has great beaches, jungles, waterfalls, swimming holes, and some lively - very touristy - small towns. We spent several nights in Montezuma. After some difficulties finding an available room - MANY tourists! - we found a nice place just on the edge of town, surrounded by jungle, a few steps from the beach, monkeys cavorting in the trees around the swimming pool - howlers and capuchins. A few pics of the grounds and the town/beach:

Montezuma is the kind of place you'd wake up one morning and discover you'd somehow spent 6 months there - if you could adjust to the heat! I went to a little artisan craft market and bought some lionfish earrings.

They're made from the fins of the terribly invasive lionfish:

I just thought they were cool-looking but the man who made them told me all about the huge problem lionfish have become in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and parts of the Atlantic, far from their native South Pacific and Indian Ocean. They are popular aquarium fish because they're so spectacular-looking, but they have been released into the wrong oceans with catastrophic results:

Here's an organization in Curaçao that hunts them and makes meals and jewelry out of them:

You never know what you'll learn when you chat with an artist!


Abram's snorkel trip to Turtle Island was fantastic, including close-up views of dolphins and a baby whale on the way back:


After a few days in Montezuma we drove 5 hours up into north central Costa Rica to La Fortuna, a small city located next to Arenal Lake and Arenal Volcano.


The town of La Fortuna is a major tourist destination and had a downtown street lined with restaurants and bars; felt a bit like the west coast of Florida or maybe some non-fancy ski resort town. Everyone raring to do their zip-lining and ATV-riding and volcano-hiking. I spent one full day luxuriating in a dark air-conditioned hotel room - didn't step outside between 9:00am and 6:00pm. Abram went to a nice hot springs resort. The next morning we visited a small sloth sanctuary about 30 minutes out of town. They focus on low-key viewing and keeping the animals safe and comfortable, unlike some sloth parks that "guarantee you will see 20 sloths!!!" and torment them, keep fences around the property so they aren't actually wild. We saw 3 sloths and one huge green iguana that had climbed about 60 feet up a tree. Photos below, taken through a telescope.


Over two weeks we made a big oval loop driving around Costa Rica, from San Jose down to Zancudo, up the coast the Puntarenas, ferry across to the Nicoya Peninsula, north to La Fortuna, and back to San Jose. Here are some random photos from driving around the country:


The day we drove from Montezuma to La Fortuna was a municipal election day. We'd seen many billboards around the country, mostly for mayors, and on voting day saw quite a few roadside pop-up voting booths and some trucks and jeeps driving around waving flags for their candidates. Always good to see democracy in action!


Costa Rica is the cleanest country I've ever been in. The public bathrooms - every single one without exception - are marvels of cleanliness. Practically no litter. People constantly sweeping, mopping, dusting, washing down walls, cleaning sidewalks. Very nice!


Here's a selection of wildlife in Costa Rica, including a couple of sloths in the sloth sanctuary; the video at the end doesn't actually show howler monkeys but you can hear them roaring!

They should be called "roarers", not howlers! I came out of our hotel room in Montezuma to go to breakfast and heard this incredibly loud roar - sounded like a damn dinosaur. Caught just a glimpse of them scurrying about.


When we stopped briefly back in San Jose getting ready to fly out, I participated in an interesting chocolate "experience"; visited a small artisanal chocolatier, made our own bars with toppings and fillings we chose - delicious! Also ate a bunch of cacao seeds right out of the pod - there are about a dozen seeds in each pod, coated with a sweet gelatinous substance - who knew they'd be so good to eat even though in their raw form they don't taste anything like chocolate. Cacao only begins to taste like chocolate after fermenting, drying, roasting, grinding, extracting the cocoa butter, and tempering.

One of my bars was sprinkled with toasted coconut, the other was filled with a mixture of almond butter, caramel, sea salt and cayenne. Yum!

We also learned that, similar to the story of coffee growing and production, most of the good cacao seeds and cacao/chocolate in various forms have been shipped out of Latin America. Over the past 20 years there's been a movement to keep some product in the countries in which the cacao is grown. It's a process!


The only countries we visited in Central America were Panamá and Costa Rica - there's much more waiting for next time. We're feeling very ready to settle down for a while in an apartment in a big city, so Mexico City here we come! It's been 40 years since either of us was there, but we both really liked it back in the day. We've been on the road staying in hotels for a while so we intend to spend some time there, at "home" in a nice neighborhood. Look for the next blog all about CDMX - Ciudad de México!


CDMX Barrio Roma animal 😁 - arrived last night, terrific dinner, fun to be back in the Ciudad.


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Khách
12 thg 2
Đã xếp hạng 5/5 sao.

I have enjoyed the 9.5 moons of Adult Beverages photos, coupled with beautiful food and scenery surrounding!

Thích
Khách
12 thg 2
Phản hồi lại

-Kit

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dugwah
12 thg 2
Đã xếp hạng 5/5 sao.

LOVE YOUR TRAVELS!!!!

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Khách
10 thg 2

I really really enjoyed this account of your trip to Costa Rica. I have several times and I felt like I returned with your photos. Thanks Val

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couvreux
10 thg 2
Đã xếp hạng 5/5 sao.

I was going to ask if you heard the howler monkeys, and voilà, you did. We use to hear them from our anchorage in Golfito. Eery. By the way we’ll be camping in Baja while you’re in CDMX.

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pattifraba
10 thg 2
Đã xếp hạng 5/5 sao.

So delighted that Val and Abram’s excellent adventure brought you to Playa Zancudo! It was so awesome to spend time with you. Love you guys!!♥️

Thích
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