San Jose to Tortuguerro

Sunday morning we got up early (6am), ate a hearty breakfast of egg omelette, fresh fruit, pastries and Costa Rican coffee (YUM), settled our bill and loaded up the car for our trip to the boat launch that would get us to Tortuguerro.

Tortuguerro is a remote nature preserve in the north part of the Carribean side of the country. The only way to get there is by boat or by plane.

On the way to catch our boat, we got lost. Very very lost. There comes a point where you can make a left onto pavement or continue straight on gravel. We went straight. Bad idea. After an hour of rattling our kidneys near to death over steadily deteriorating gravel roads, we finally figured out from the locals that we were in the middle of a gargantuan banana plantation.

Them there are baby banana plants:


Our banana plantation "adventure" might not have been an all bad thing if we didn't have a boat to catch. We had to go all the way back to our missed turn, make the *correct* choice, and then go the rest of the way. Yeesh.

It did make for interesting picture taking though. As you drive through a banana plantation, you see all these pole-arch thingies snaking through the fields of banana trees.


And you realize, after a while, that this is how they get bananas from point A to point B. Wow.


They even have contraptions to get the bananas across the road. (See above and below.)


Here's a cute cow we saw on the road...interesting that most of their livestock is...well...less rotund than ours here in the states. Hmm.


Tell me these aren't a coupla the cutest kids you've ever seen! They were playing by the side of the road at the exact point where we finally figured out that the road was going to continue to deteriorate...and we needed to turn around.

I don't think they held our foolishness against us! :-)

More Costa Rican adventures to come.......................