Friday 10th November
After 3 nights in one place we returned to the road and drove back towards Sierppes and then inland to a village over the central valley. Here we ate a snack recommended by Alejandro, Tortilla and cheese. To my mind I’d have preferred fruit. The restaurant had a great view across the valley.
We left and headed to La Marta conservation area. On the way Maggi realised that she had lost the bracelet she had recently bought in India.
At La Marta Alejandro tales to us about the chocolate and sugar cane processing that used to occur on site. We then walked beside the La Marta river and Alex explained different aspects of the local ecology. All very interesting if only I could remember it.
After a couple of hours wandering around the rainforest we returned to our coach and Freddy drove us to our new hotel Villa Florencia in Turrialba.
The Caribbean atmosphere of the coast has completely disappeared. We have left the banana plantations and are now in the land of coffee and cattle. So far I would describe Costa Rica as a 2nd world country. They have some of the infrastructure of the west but lots of it doesn’t work properly or is in a state of constant repair or construction.
We arrived in an our new hotel to find there is no internet in the room, it’s difficult to close the fridge door and the bathroom is dirty. None of the hotels have allowed you to flush toilet paper down the loo. These are just a few examples where the structure underlying doesn’t quite work as it should.
We ate at the hotel this evening. We all paid $20 for our meal which consisted of a main course and a pudding. I had steak and chips with a salad. I ate the steak and chips first and the started on the salad. I had virtually finished the meal when I found some plastic in the salad. I complained and she said sorry.
At the hotel there is a graduation party going on for the middle school kids. It seems that half the town is here. They are all dressed up and making a great deal of noise with the disco. The piece de resistance however came with the arrival of a 6 member band of percussionists. I first heard them from our room about 200 m away from the dance hall. When I arrived at the dance hall the deafening noise at last seemed to have some kind of structure. The leader of the band occasional blew his whistle, they had lyrics at one point and members of the audience sang along as they danced to the racket.
Maggi and I left to go to bed.