PUNTARENAS - COSTA RICA

We awoke to a Costa Rican morning & were very excited at the thought of walking through a rainforest

We left at 7:15am for our forest skywalk & Pura Vida garden tour with Ricardo our tour guide & Miguel, our erratic bus driver - we were driven through the outskirts of the town - homes that looked as if they should have been condemned, homes with bars across the front, garbage in the streets, not a very pretty sight :-(

We thought, being a tourist destination the town would be quite pretty, but that was not the case. 

The further we travelled the worse it got & once out of the residential area the roadside was littered with rubbish & the land was extremely dry & dusty. Ricardo explained it was the end of the dry season & the wet season would start in about 2 weeks, he also said most of the rivers are polluted, but were full of crocodiles -  so don't swimming

After travelling along an extremely dusty (slightly scary) dirt road we were dropped off to begin our skywalk - you can see from the below picture of Cliff just how dry the forest was. Maybe we had seen too many David Attenborough documentaries on the Costa Rican rainforests, so disappointment was an understatement. 

It did become greener the further we walked -  but still very dry.

We then went to privately owned botanical gardens. An American couple had bought the property 15 years ago & created these beautiful gardens which had great views of the coast.

We saw beautiful hummingbirds & colourful butterflies, but the highlight was seeing wild macaws, which was incredible - they were as noisy & crazy as the white cockatoos in Oz

After a nice lunch it was back on the bus for another stop. The river was quite pretty & we saw lots of iguanas

Back in town we wandered for a little while through markets then back on the ship to wash away the dust.

     

What can we say - Farewell Puntarenas,looking forward to a rest day at sea tomorrow - then it will be the Panama Canal.

Take care xxx

CABO SAN LUCAS - MEXICO

We disembarked the Aurora and as we started to walk along the pier we were swamped by locals trying to sell tours, cuban cigars, jewellery and toys. Restaurant staff urging us to come in to eat and drink.

 All we wanted to do was wander along the marina, enjoy the sights and check out the shops

Now this is an interesting mode of transport for the local Police 

check out the helicopter on this boat

mmmmmmm Corona 

 

Some interesting advertising billboards for over the counter medications from local pharmacies 

and the pharmacies are also the local bottle shops!!

Enough time was spent wandering around, so we entered a little restaurant  "Alexander's" where the staff were extremely friendly and genuinely helpful with all of our silly questions. Our afternoon was spent eating spicy Mexican food, a bucket of coronas for Cliff and Margaritas for myself as we watched the passing crowds

Cliff with 2 of our waiters - Karim and Armardo

we were serenaded with a Santana song

As we sailed away to our next port of call - we sat on our balcony admiring the rocky landscape 

called "Lands End" - Santana playing on our iPod and thought to ourselves - What a great day we've had.