THE DEW IS DONE

May 2, 2016

Today Bonnie and I went ashore with tablemates Dana and Grayson to explore the National Forest here in Puerto Quepos, Costa Rica.  It cost us about $40 to go on our own as opposed to $110 for the ship's excursion.  We took a tender off of the Pacific Princess because the harbor is not big enough -- deep enough -- for the ship to dock.  The tender is a smaller craft (I think they run the life boats as tenders when we are anchored just off shore, but no one has confirmed that).  Loading them today was exciting.  The sea was rolling a good bit and the tender would raise above the loading platform and then drop below the landing platform and the staff would watch and tell us when to go.  "Stand by."  "Red 5 standing by."

Once ashore we walked towards town when a taxi pulled up and Dana, who speaks passable Spanish, negotiated our ride to the forest -- $10 for the four of us for a 30 minute ride.  Once at the forest the driver agreed to come back in 3 hours and pick us up.  When we walked out, he was there waiting for us and agreed to take us back into town with a side trip to buy some soft drinks.  There was no Mountain Dew.  No Mello Yello.  So I am reduced to drinking Fanta.  And it is nasty!  Puerto Vallarta in 3 days -- maybe they'll have some Dew.

The admission price to the forest was $16 per person and $20 per person for a guide.  Our guide, Filipe, is in his 20s and studied 2.5 years to become a National Forest tour guide.  He was whipping out the names of the flora and fauna and spotting creatures hidden that we could not see.  He was equipped with a special telescope that he would set up so we could get a closer look, then take our smart phones and take pictures of the creatures through the telescope.

The temperature was 90 if it was a degree and the humidity was just short of 100.  Bonnie and I walked half of the trek and headed back to wait for more hearty souls to join us.  It was a good day.

Tonight's entertainment was "The Rhythm of Argentina" starring Hilario and Haley, The Master Gauchos.  Energetic Argentinean dancing and bolo activity.  Look it up on YouTube.  Very good show.

My talk on cod fish is tomorrow at 10:45.  If you are into ecology and the things we are doing to our planet, you would enjoy the cod talk.  What at one time was declared to be an inexhaustible supply has been fished out -- they are no longer commercially viable.  It's a good talk, and I've slipped some funny stuff in as well.

If she is still awake -- the walking just about whipped her -- I will let Bonnie blog now.

Well, between my nose running and my knees throbbing here goes. The captain woke me at 6 am to tell us we had arrived (he personally called and said, "Bonnie, get up!"). I arose took a bath and headed upstairs for my mile walk. (what was I thinking!) It was already very hot (high and low were in the 80's and 90's). I made my walk headed to the cabin bringing David coffee. Grayson had called while I was out and we were going to move up our meeting time. We went up, had a bite of breakfast (one of us had smoked trout -- very good) and headed out with our water bottles.

Bumpy tender ride. It was definitely an adventure getting aboard. The cab ride was nice up long, winding narrow roads. It reminded me of Garrett County.  We walked to exhaustion, at mine, and returned to the ship about 1:30. I took some neat pictures and videos in the forest. Beautiful place. I very much enjoyed the walk, except for the pain, ouch.

After the bumpy ride back in the tender we returned to our cabin and we stripped off our wet and soggy clothes and took a shower before heading up for some lunch. (Side note, I, Bonnie, made an interesting video about that). Maybe I will show you.

David returned to the cabin after lunch and I went to sit on deck 5 and finish some more of my crocheting. About 4 pm I was falling asleep so I returned to the cabin to take a nap and get dressed for supper. Supper was uninteresting. I had a mango and pear cold soup   (that was tasty), jerk chicken with rice and beans (too much worchestshire sauce) of which I had a few bites of chicken and a warm chocolate cookie with vanilla ice cream (I only ate the ice cream). So much for supper.

The show was good. We have returned to the cabin and I have taken some coricidan because my nose is running. I shall hopefully sleep tonight and lay in the bed in the morning.

TTFN.