Cory's First Day in Costa Rica

Hotel grounds were interesting, lots of fruits. Breakfast of eggs, watermellon, mango, green mango (not so good) pineapple, corosol juice, half ripe cooked plantain with syrup and cinnamon, could have also had rice and beans and toast, cereal.

 Car rental picked us up about 9am. Changed money at a bank, filled up with gas, traffica a mix between American and Haitian driving, great roads, stopped at a fruit stand, bought avocado that look like zucchini and some kind of passionfruit that I don't recognize but is eaten plain instead of juiced.

 At the top of the mountain above Turrialba stopped at a peach palm stand, bought ripe and raw fruit.  Expensive but they were big nice fruit, most were the preferred type with cracks in the skin.

Still dry, lots of brown lawns, looks like they had drought like we did this year. CATIE is impressive. Found Carlos and we will tour the peach palm collections tomorrow at 9:30. We drove by them and they are about at their peak right now, some spineless trees were also loaded with great looking fruit. 

They had a table with many exotic fruits, looks like a good amount are ripening now, tasted black sapote, about like mine.

People are very friendly and helpful, a few speak English. We had left a kilo of peach palm on the stand at the top of the mountain and were driving off and heard a whistle so stopped, the motorbiker that had been buying peach palm and translating for us with the vendor ran to us and gave us the bag.

Will take a while to explore CATIE let alone all the farmer's markets. Don't know if we will have time to visit a mountain park or other tourist site. It is fairly easy to get around with the GPS.


There are whole mountainsides covered with shade cloth held up with poles for what appears to be small ferns for floral arrangements. Maybe they supply the world.
Interesting country.


Cory