panama city • 2 comments • While we did spend quite a bit of time at the Panama City airport (making connections and playing Nintendo), this is actually all of Panama that we got to see:
puerto viejo • 14 comments • This is our last post from Puerto Viejo, in Costa Rica. Just a few random photos, taken around town:
cacao • 6 comments • We took a tour of a "chocolate house" (a place where chocolate is made, not a house made of chocolate - although, if you know where one of those is, let us know). The Bribri tribe (a small indigenous group in Costa Rica) were mostly isolated from the rest of Costa Rica until the mid-70's when some of them began participating in the eco-tourism boom. Upon entering the house, we were offered sugar cane and the sweet/sour seeds of a cacao fruit, which we happily accepted. They also showed us this unusually large lemon and offered no explanation as to it's size or why they were displaying it: We were given a demonstration of how chocolate is made in addition to some of the rituals that are performed by the Bribri people. In addition to the many cacao trees, there are also many other plants surrounding the house which are also used for making food and beauty products. We're fairly certain that we were provided with the name of the tree in the following photos, but we have since forgotten it, so we shall refer to it as the "lipstick plant". The prickly balls cracked open to reveal little red pellets that you could squeeze a small amount of red paste from. All the ladies in the tour group put some on their lips and it lasted the entire day, even after a swim. Beat that, CoverGirl Outlast Lip Stain. At the end of the tour, we were taken to the gift shop in the back of the house where we could purchase their all-natural, organic products. They had curry pastes and an assortment of chocolate flavors: cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, vanilla, mint, coffee etc... The curry smelled amazing and we would have loved to take some with us, but it would have likely just exploded in our bag, and we rarely cook on this trip anyway. We did pick up a jar of cocoa butter for much less than it would have cost back home.
i rode my bicycle past your window last night • 9 comments • You can rent bicycles on every street corner in Puerto Viejo. Given the size of the beach town, bikes make the most sense as a means of transportation. Pedaling around has always been one of our favourite things to do. We ended up selling our bikes before we left for this trip and the last time we rode bikes was at our wedding. Cycling in February is not something we would have been able to do back home. The fact that we biked along a beach is just icing on the cake.
surfers • 10 comments • Look at these surfers. I took this photo while standing on the beach in Puerto Vijeo (in between taking pictures of Alex wiping out). Oh, to be those cool kids with their cool rash guards and cool board shorts. Come back later to see pictures of us awkwardly attempting to surf (again).
sloths! • 24 comments • Just outside of Puerto Viejo, is a Sloth Sanctuary, where injured sloths are rescued and rehabilitated. Sadly, due to urban sprawl, the sloths' natural habitat is diminishing. These animals have been accidentally climbing onto power lines, mistaking them for trees. Many have been run over by vehicles trying to cross the road. Also, on land, sloths are slow moving, and some local children exploit this to abuse them. We were guided around the sanctuary by some volunteers who showed us a video of a "sloth ballet", a wild sloth with her baby (wild sloths tend to visit the grounds of the sanctuary on their own, as it is adjacent to a forest), and several adorable baby sloths: It was really neat to get so close to the sloths. They're very docile but those claws look pretty vicious (we were told they're not). It's nice to visit animals in a setting that is non-exploitative and seems to really support their conservation. The centre has a sloth gift shop where you can buy pretty much anything you can think of with a picture of a sloth on it. Even the restrooms had pictures of sloths: The star of the show was an 18 year old sloth called Buttercup: If you'd like, you can check out a video of Buttercup eating a flower, that we took, on youtube.
