Fog and Rain, and yucca root and coffee

This huge bug seemed to be a pet of a vendor selling cocoanut milk.


Couple of items left off yesterday's information. All bags (and purses) had to be scanned before leaving the airport. Scanned like they are when entering an air port in the U.S. Not sure what they were checking for, but.....
N exchanged some money at the airport and came back where I was watching the luggage with a slightly "dazed" look. He gave them 380 dollars or so and received 170,000 Costa Rican colones. We've figured that one us dollar is worth about 500 colones--depending on the particular exchange rate. Really makes a person feel wealthy- until you realize that it is the same amount of money, just in different currency.

NOW--Here it is Tuesday morning and breakfast is really good. Waffles, omelet bar, luscious fresh fruit. Yum! This hotel is like a garden with pools and flowers and beautiful shrubs everywhere.

We met with the entire tour group (except for the 2 who didn't make it in last night cuz they missed a connection at Heathrow). We are with a much more diverse group than usual. We have 15 from Texas, and 13 from Canada, England and Scotland. The rest are from California, North Carolina, Oregon,and N. Dakota. Our guide, Jose, is a native Costa Rican who has been guiding tours for 21 years. His quote for the day was "The only flat thing in Costa Rica is beer when it is warm". Lots of mountains and valleys.

We learned that the reason for all the barbed wire and bars on homes and buildings (sort of like El Paso) is because years ago, the police was not particularly efficient and the major way natives had of protecting themselves was to install their own protection. This has changed in the past decade and safety of people and goods has become a priority.
Costa Rica exports pineapple, bananas, strawberries, coffee and microchips. While tourism is not the major industry it is one of the top ones. Minimum wage here is 66 dollars a week and there is about an 8% unemployment rate. The literacy rate is 97%, one of the highest in South/Central America.

We've seen sooo many lovely flowers here and I'll dwell on that later, but let me mention that hydrangeas are everywhere and they are huge.




Driving thru San Jose this morning we saw a KFC with a sign advertising an 8 piece meal with all the fixin's for 9,000 colones.

On a very bumpy and winding road we made our way to the Poas Volcano. After walking uphill (about 4-5% grade) we arrived to see FOG. No way we could photograph or experience the crater cuz it was socked in totally. We waited about 15 min, hoping the fog would lift, but it didn't, so we walked down to the reception area/ gift shop and bus park. I did get 2 very good postcards, so I have an idea what we didn't get to see.

This obviously is an aerial view, not from where we would have seen the volcano.


On the way to and from the volcano we saw these "poor man's umbrella" plants.


Lunch was next and we had choices of Casados (rice and beans) with beef, with chicken, or vegetarian (con queso) or vegetable soup. Included with the Cascados was a dab of cole slaw, potatoes, a hush puppy looking item and a caramelized plaintain followed by corn pudding. Lets talk about the hush puppy looking thing. No one at my table could tell what it was by the taste, so we asked the waiter and it was made of yucca root. It was really good. Now the plaintain (banana)--we asked how it was prepared and it was rolled in butter, then sugar, then put under a broiler. Had a creme broule kind of crust and was really, really good. The corn pudding had the consistency of cheese and was okay. Not too sweet just okay.
The folks who had missed their connection (Pat and David) joined us at lunch, so we now have a complete tour group.

From there we ventured to the Doka Coffee Plantation also called Tres Generation . We learned all about the growing and production of the coffee that is exported to Europe and America.


It takes 25#'s of coffee cherries (unpeeled beans) to make 7#'s of ground coffee. We were told all about the picking (by hand) the cracking, sorting, drying, and finally roasting of the beans. A coffee tree doesn't produce any fruit until it is 4 years old and is "taken out of production" at 20 years of age. We saw baby plants (2 months), up to year old plants which are ready to be planted in the field.
The sort of coffee that this plantation produces is Arabica and they have several varieties of Arabica. Once the beans are sorted and ready to be exported they are bagged and stored to rest for 3 months.


Our tour guide was Diana and she would make a really good elementary teacher She repeated, spoke clearly (even tho' her accent made her hard to understand at times) and quizzed us about what she had just said.
Weather has not co-operated with us today. We were rained on at the volcano and also at the plantation. Glad my jacket has a hood.

Gonna get ready for supper Talk to you later. Yea! for free WiFi!