Turning Towards Home

This was our last day of the Costa Rican adventures. Before breakfast, My Lovely Wife and I did an early morning walk and found a troop of White Faced Monkeys traversing the trees. A little further down the walk, we ran into the local Macaws. After breakfast, there was time for just one more chance to see the wild life.

We got on a boat and went croc watching. It was a little slow in the beginning. We saw a few crocs, and some birds. Then a guy got out of his boat with meat. He's the local croc tamer I'm guessing. I zoomed in with my lens. Impressive! He still had all of his fingers. The croc pushed up on its hind legs, and lunged to get the meat. The boat safari got much better as we headed down stream towards the ocean. The number of birds greatly increased, and there was much snapping of shutters.

From my point of view, this was the end of the trip. There's always one of these moments. In Africa it was when we left Ngorongoro Crater to head back to Arusha. Deep down, I knew it was all over but for some shopping and the airplane. The same was true today. We headed back to the central valley in which San Jose sits. I'm only marginally interested in shopping, and we were going to be in coach on the plane, so nothing to look forward to there.

We stopped at a wood carving factory. Being Saturday, the factory was not working. But we got a little tour, and learned how the wood was aged, and then shaped. I liked this. Then, there was the gift shop. I found a small Toucan carving. It and the ocarina I purchased at the national museum would be my remembrances of Costa Rica. (Ok, and the t-shirts My Lovely Wife found for me.)

One of the men in our group works wood and purchased some very nice blocks. But My Lovely Wife scored the best deal. She asked for and received a few pieces of wood that were raw. No planing, no polish. Just aged wood. All for the low low price of free. I'm not sure what she's going to do with the wood, but I have faith in her creative mind.

Next, was a leather goods factory. This business was contained in a single family house. The sole proprietor was a woman who started the business out of necessity, and managed to get noticed. Her specialty was hand bags. These regularly sold for 500 bucks American. I loved her story, but her products weren't for me.

All that was left was the last dinner, and a short meeting were we spoke about the expectations we told Pricilla about at the beginning of the trip. The vast majority of what we wanted was satisfied. As a group, we had very few complaints. Our 11 days in Costa Rica have been fun. No one in our group needed to break out the Imodium, and none of the volcanoes buried us in lava.