Puerto Jimenez, Day 2

 We had hoped to go on a chocolate tour – there are a few chocolate farms around here, and they have tours so that you can see how cacao is grown, harvested, processed, and then manufactured into chocolate.  Plus a few of the places are organic eco-farms, where they are working to sustain the native plants and support the animals in the area.  We thought, as chocolate lovers, that this would be an interesting half-day activity.  But another Oh well – these are things that are only available in high season, tourist season.  Not going to happen today, or this week, or this month.

So we walked around town, had a nice breakfast (pancakes, or pan queques in Tican Spanish, with slices of fresh banana in the pan queques), walked around town some more.  We met a nice guy from Seattle who married a Tican woman and they recently moved back here to Osa; a young man from Vermont who lived on St. John for three years, and is now here doing an internship on sustainable environments and ecology; and a group from Newcastle, England, students who have just graduated and worked with a local school, and are now camping and touring.  Interesting, off the beaten path kinds of tourists.  Like us.

With the ever-present macaws flying by overhead – they are so large, with the big heads and long tails, they look like some kind of stealth aircraft, although with all the noise they make they are hardly stealthy.  They certainly announce their presence all over town.

 

It’s almost high noon, and we’re taking a break in our AC room – probably head out to the beach, or the gulf, or something later on.  I think we’ll skip the major hiking, since the weather is something like 90 degrees with 90% humidity – not good hiking weather, even in the middle of a jungle.

Later – we spent some time at the beach on the Golfo Dulce, and, well, we’re totally spoiled with our USVI white sand and clear water.  It was pretty, it was tranquil, the sand looked like mud and the water was murky.  We stayed out.  As I said, we’re spoiled.

It is currently raining, after much thunder and foreboding skies – not a heavy rain, just enough to cool the air.  We’ll see what the night brings.  And tomorrow, we’ll probably head out.