Beautiful Costa Rica


Advertisement
Published: June 22nd 2017
Edit Blog Post

Geo: 9.98102, -84.8392

What a different country is Costa Rica! After the poverty of
Nicaragua this was an immediate change. Sure, they have their poor people like
everywhere but as soon as we arrived it was clear that this was a prosperous
country. In fact their immigration “problem” is that lots of Nicaraguans come
down for work and do the jobs the Costa Ricans don't want to do. The economy is
based on coffee production, money coming in from overseas and tourism. They are
the only country in the world to have no standing army. The army was abolished
in 1948 and all the money that was spent on defence was spent on education with
the result that they now have a 97% literacy rate. If only the rest of the
world would follow suit. They also have
a welfare state with the equivalent of national contributions from salary which
goes towards free health care, education and pensions – very much like the
UK. As we drove up into the mountains we
did not see the tiny shacks we had seen further north but saw all decent
houses. The country Is lush and green due to humidity and rainfall. The
mountains come down the centre of the country and there are large coffee
plantations everywhere. Apparantly the best coffee beans are grown at a certain
altitude. The higher they grow the stronger and better tasting are the arabic
beans. On the East side of the mountains, the rain comes in from the Caribbean
sea and by orographic lifting it all drops on the east side of the mountain
thus resulting in a lucious rain forest. This was where we headed for our walk
in the clouds- Parque San Luis- a private venture which conserves the rain
forest because it has opened it up to tourism rather than tearing it down.
There is an amazing zip line here which I would have loved to have done but our
tour was just walking through the rain forest along paths and over bridges over
the canopy looking for whatever we could see. Our guide pointed out the various
trees such as the strangler fig and other epiphytes. We had a brief glimpse of
a type of squirrel and the national bird
. The other animals and birds were
elusive. Howeve ,we did stop to watch the humming birds feeding on sugar water
which was an absolute delight. They moved so fast that they were impossible to
photograph properly. There were so many different varieties. At the end of the
walk we also saw butterflies- equally gorgeous especially the big blue again
difficult to photograph in flight. Despite not seeing loads of wild life it was
a super walk through the forest. Definitely a country to visit again.




Additional photos below
Photos: 13, Displayed: 13


Advertisement



26th January 2017

Costa Rica is a beautiful country and well developed by Central American standards. There is plenty of petty crime there, however. When we rented a beach house on the Caribbean side several years ago, the house was robbed while we were out
one evening. I actually walked into the house as the caper was in progress, and quickly locked myself into my room. Fortunately they ran away. I was told that I was very lucky.
26th January 2017

Hey I'm just round the corned surfing in Nosara

Tot: 0.418s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 47; dbt: 0.1071s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb