Janice and John had been here a decade or so ago, but not to the Caribbean coast. This is my first time in Central America.
Puerto Limon is Costa Rica’s busiest Caribbean port. But, we didn’t stay in port. We took a bus two hours into the interior to ride a tram through the rain forest canopy. On the way we went past shipping container warehouses and banana and pineapple plantations. We also saw a small sloth in a tree at the side of the road.
The tram ride lasted about 70 minutes, out through the lower level of the rain forest then back through the canopy. Since most animals are out at dawn or twilight, we didn’t see more than a few birds and several lines of leaf cutter. (I got several good videos of the ants. I’ll see if I can get one online. Have I said how slow and expensive Internet time is on the ship?) We saw all sorts of plants including a rare orchid that blooms only one day a year.
The tram is one of about six that the company has around the world. They set it up in a private environmental preserve adjacent to a national park, so that it helps buffer the jungle in the park. They built the tram as sustainably as they could, including helicoptering in the dozen towers.
Since we had to head east to reach the Panama canal, we lost an hour overnight and set our clocks back to Eastern time.