An absolutely fabulous day ashore in Costa Rica. Our group met up at 745 and went ashore together to find Ricky Ricardo Tours waiting for us at the end of the pier with a nice looking mini bus. The weather was hot and sunny but nowhere near as bad as we were expecting. It was in the 30s but not as humid as I expected. There was some breeze.

Ricky himself was a jovial chap who spoke perfect English as his mother came from Liverpool. His real name was White! First stop on our tour was a woodworking shop to see the carvings produced locally. There was a lot of stuff but nothing tempting.

Costa Rica has about 400,000 inhabitants and most of them live in the capital San Jose. At the coastal area where we were, it was a jungly, lush, green, volcanic mountained place, incredibly like south Goa. We just kept remarking on that. It's very very fertile due to the abundance of water and the rich volcanic soil. There are about 400 active volcanoes apparently. Our second stop was a fruit farm run by one of the local Indian families. Talk about a fruit salad. The chap just kept bringing out fruit after fruit, all grown in his garden and also many herbs which they use both for culinary and medicinal purposes. The medicinal adaptions were most interesting. He grew an amazing number of different plants and fruits, some of them familiar, others not at all. One weird one was a fruit called nunu which looked a bit like a white kiwi fruit but smelled very strongly of blue cheese. Terrible. I didn't dare taste it. I have a picture when I can upload again. There were also plentiful cashew trees (again like Goa) and we tried the fruit and the nuts. The fruit was surprisingly delicious. They make a non-alcoholic drink from it.

Next stop was the Tarcoles river. First we stopped at a grove of almond trees on the river bank to search for the red macaws who spend the day there. We did indeed find a pair. They were the largest parrots I have ever seen with large wings and tails and beautiful red plumage. They mate for life.

Then one of the highlights of the day which was a cruise on the Tarcoles river through the mangroves to see wildlife, in particular crocodiles. The boats were low to the water, wooden tanga types, ideal for viewing. We boarded via a rickety jetty and set off finding 2 enormous crocodiles almost immediately. One of the guides had some raw meat with him and he got into the shallow brown water and began to feed these two crocodiles, making them leap out of the water. Clearly a madman! I've never seen them in the wild before and certainly never actually seen a crocodile jump. Terrifying! They literally explode out of the water with such force…… We thought that perhaps these were just their two tame (eh??) ones and that would be that but in fact we saw about 40 in the course of the next hour, in size from tiny juveniles to about 7m long. He said they were not aggressive in the way salt water crocodiles are, but on the other hand if you fell in, they would eat you. Undoubtedly LOL!!!

There were not only crocodiles along the river but many species of birds too and marine iguana lizards. The number of different birds we saw in a relatively short time was just incredible. Quite a few different sorts of herons and ibis, vultures, frigate birds, a type of swallow…. Some of them beautifully coloured. We absolutely loved our river trip and would have liked to have spent even longer.

It was time for lunch and we went to a local beach restaurant overlooking the sea for a typical Costa Rican lunch of rice, beans, vegetables and grilled sea bass. The sea bass was excellent, really moist. We also had fried plantains and some spicey sauces. We tried a local juice which was something like soutain pronounced sowtain. It was really nice, white in colour and no idea what the real fruit looked like.

After lunch we headed south into the national park and our group split 4 and 6. Four of us were travelling through the tree canopy by zipwire and the others were travelling by an aerial tram. The zipwire was thrilling but pretty frightening to be honest.

First we got into our hanging harnesses, gloves and helmets. Then we were transported up the mountain through thick forest and jungle by a tractor. Once at the top, we climbed up onto the first platform which was on the edge of a precipice. There were to be 12 runs to get down the mountain. After some rudimentary instruction we started off. I don't mean that to sound as if the instructors were lacking. They weren't. It was a very professional, slick operation. There just wasn't a lot to tell you really. Just some pretty obvious rules like, don't touch your equipment after we've set it up and hang on!!! They clipped us on to the wire by huge karabiners and then you kind of lay back in your harness and had one hand on the wire behind your "attachment lock" and the other on the hanging rope in front. To slow down you pulled down on the main wire using your trailing gloved hand. Sometimes you didn't have to brake it all depended on the speed of the "run". Some of the runs were really long and you plummeted down through these trees at a tremendous height. In some respects there was no point in worrying because you were so very vulnerable that there was nothing you could do if something went wrong. It would all have been over very quickly…. The hardest part was judging whether to brake or not. If you braked too much, sometimes you wouldn't make the next platform and you would then have to turn around as you hung in the air and pull yourself along the wire. Now, this might be easy for young strapping chaps. Not so easy for old fat women with no arm strength LOL. It happened to me twice. Mostly I adopted the same approach I did while trying to ski which was to just hang on tight and plummet downwards at top speed. I did try to brake but as mentioned was put off that a bit by the fear of having to pull myself along again. The trouble is that if you plummet, you also spin and turn so you are backwards. This means you can't see the platform coming and also the emergency brake block which in effect stops you hitting the platform.

Most of the runs were very fast too. I had had this completely mistaken - and I now realise, ludicrous - belief that you would be going along quite slowly and could stop to admire the scenery and wildlife!!!! No! You plummet at top speed, like Tarzan through the trees. I either had my eyes screwed closed or fixed in grim determination at the next platform somewhere ahead in the treetopsI I didn't see anything! It was in many ways terrifying but once you started there was literally no going back. There was no other way to get down other than to go on. You couldn't get down from the tree platforms by a ladder or anything. I was glad we did it but I'm not entirely sure I'd do it again.

The worst moment was when we were standing on one of the treetop platforms, which by the way are not large, maybe 6 feet x 6 feet with a non survivable drop beneath. Just room for you, the guide who checked your attachments and the large tree trunk. You remained clipped on with one line and kind of edged around the trunk from the landing point, to reach the take off point. So, imagine…… what would be the worst thing that could come and join me in such a place????? No, worse than accident prone Bob hurtling towards me at top speed (I got used to that!!!)! A horrible great black hornet thing which kept trying to get in our shoes!!!! I can tell you that I leapt off that platform with far more alacrity than any of the others.

Well, it took us about 2 hours to complete this descent (the runs were long….) and we were sweaty, dusty and knackered by the time we got to the bottom. Craving a drink to be honest. Not water. Felt happy to have survived without injury. LOL.

The others enjoyed the aerial tram which was far more sedate. I had taken my camera along but it was almost impossible to take pictures under the circumstances although I did get a couple. The zipwire people had professional photographers along on a couple of the slow runs and they took some which we bought. They are on cd so I will need to get them onto my tablet somehow. In most of them Bob is looking as happy as can be and I have my face all screwed up and a rictus grin.

After that we enjoyed some cold beers on the drive back to Puntarenas, feeling they were well deserved. Have really liked the brief glimpse we've had of Costa Rica. Absolutely beautiful country, rich in nature and biodiversity. Well worth a much longer visit.

Dinner, a walk round the moonlit deck and then we turned in. Too tired for the late show tonight. What an adventurous pair of pensioners we are LOL.