Day 22 West - 01/23/22 - Puntarenas

Cuteness is the word for today.  Our selected shore excursion was to visit the Sloth sanctuary, botanical garden, and an oxcart  factory.  The tours were delayed in departing (as they were on the previous leg of the trip.  A Covid vaccination card had to be displayed and they photographed it.

 

The first stop after a little over an hour drive was at the Costa Rica Animal Rescue Center.  This group is privately funded and accepts no government funded.  Volunteers come for 3 month stints. All of the animals are rescues.   Many of the birds and monkeys are former pets or bar owner's animals.  Many of the birds and monkeys were abused and one monkey was an alcoholic and particularly aggressive.  There were parrots, coati, deer, hogs, parakeets, multiple varieties of monkeys, raccoons, macaws, lizards, & sloths. There are even a few wild monkeys and a sloth that make their home here as well.  Most of the animals cannot be released back into the wild, and for those that can, the governmental authorities make that decision and execute it without disclosing to the center where the relation is being made.

 

The sloths were my absolute favorite and they are so cute.  There were mature sloths and a couple baby sloths.  Our guide was Puerto Rican who lives in Massachusetts but us volunteering here.

 

Our next stop was at the Orchid Garden (Jardín Botánico  Orquídeas) in La Garita.  It's a small garden with a nice orchid collection, a small pond and many examples of native flora.  One interesting flower had a scent like shampoo.  There was also an interesting dead tree with very tiny bees inhabiting it.

 

We then enjoyed a nice lunch at a local restaurant with views overlooking the volcano my wife bought this cute barking and dancing green chihuahua toy dog and outside the restaurant there was a dog owner with a small dog.  Angela turned on her green chihuahua, the other little dog was mystified by the sounds and actions of the little mechanical dog!.  

 

From there we made our way to our final stop at the oxcart factory.  I'm pretty sure we've been there previously, but I'll have to recheck my pictures once we get home. I found the wheel making portion of the factory fascinating.  There are all sorts of power tools there many of which are powered by a water wheel and and overhead line and pulley system and belts.  It's like stepping back into the late 1800's or early 1900's.  In a separate room, the oxcarts are assembled and it was interesting to see lumber approaching two feet in width! Each oxcart sells for $4,000.

 

We then drove back to the pier using a different road than we came out on.  On Sunday afternoons, both lanes of that road are converted to a one way road headed towards San Jose from the beach.  We arrived back at the pier ten or fifteen minutes late, but there was at least one one tour bus which not yet arrived. The Captain announced that he really wanted to depart on the slack tide at 5:45pm.  The last bus didn't arrive back until 6:10pm, and 8 minutes later we were away from the pier.  That's fast!  While we were waiting for the last bus to arrive, the Viking Star, which was berthed next us departed.  Our Captain pressed the horn button and it apparently stuck as it blasted continuously for several minutes with the Viking ship's captain rooting its horn several times to signify it heard it.  Our Captain did come on the intercom and acknowledged he broke the horn button.

 

Ayer a warm dinner eating on the aft Lido deck (first time doing that after over 550 sea days), we went to the Main Stage for the dance troupe performance of In Tandem which was about ballroom dancing.  As I was sitting there the lady next to me leaned over and asked if I was Btimmer.  When I said yes, she said her name was Susan and that we had cruised before.  After the show, we chatted for a very long time reminiscing out our shared cruises and talking about future cruises.  It was a good chat.

 

While we were at the show, I had left a little green toy chihuahua on our bed as competition for the nightly towel animal.  Sure enough, when we returned to the room there was a puppy towel animal.

 

And so ended our day in Costa Rica.  We have a sea day tomorrow that's packed with programming.