Road Trip-Playa Verde

Last week several of us from the condo complex, plus a few other folks, took a trip to the “interior” to Palo Verde Natural Preserve.  We took a “Tourismo” van which holds about a dozen people and is very comfortable.  Our tour guide was Juan Carlos, a young man extremely knowledgeable about the plants and animals, and Costa Rica overall.  He was also very adept at imitating the sounds of the various animals we saw.  He was a handsome young man, spoke very good English, and had a scar on his cheek, one on his chin, and one on the back of his head from bull riding.

It was another sunny and hot day.  In fact I noticed our driver took extra precautions.

He used the towel the entire trip to keep the sun from getting too hot on his arm and leg.

As we were driving along, Juan all of a sudden asked the driver to stop.  He got out of the van and ran back along the road.  Pretty soon he came back with this pretty, but unusual looking flower-like thing and asked if we knew what it was.

After much discussion we finally guessed that it was a cashew.  The cashew is the only fruit whose seed grows outside the fruit.  The seed is surrounded by a double shell containing an allergenic resin that can irritate the skin much like poison ivy.  Properly roasting cashews destroys the toxin, but it must be done outdoors as the smoke (not unlike that from burning poison ivy) can cause severe, sometimes life-threatening, reactions by irritating the lungs.

As we were traveling along the road, Juan pointed out these mountains in the distance that were part of a National Preserve.  He said they had many caves with beautiful stalagmites and stalactites.

He also told us there are 112 volcanoes in Costa Rica and seven of them are still active.  The tallest one is 14,000 feet high.

Another interesting item was the fence rows.  The farmers would use young trees for the fence posts.  This way the trees would grow and create a permanent fence and contribute to the environment all at the same time.

Costa Rica’s major exports are bananas, pineapple, and coffee, in that order.  These are all mostly grown inland and on the east coast where there is a more temperate and moist climate.  Two of the popular crops grown in this area are sugar cane and teak.  There is so much sugar cane that they make a molasses from it and use that to coat the gravel roads to keep the dust down.  We saw many sugar cane fields and many teak forests.

Teak is a beautiful wood.  It is very strong and is also waterproof.  Because of this it is used for just about everything from telephone poles to cooking utensils.

The first stop we made was the town of Nicoya to see the oldest Catholic cathedral in the country.  It was originally built in 1522 by the Spaniards.

The interior of the church is made of teak and mahogany wood (the darker wood at the corners is mahogany).

The front of the church now has a clock that was recently installed.  However, originally the time was calculated by the shadow of the peak of the front door falling on a sundial created in the interior tile floor.  That is why the front door has the specific shape.

As we left the church we went past a cemetery.  In Costa Rica people are buried above ground because of the heavy rains.

After leaving the church we drove on to Pala Verde because it was important we get there at low tide.

To be cont………

FOOTNOTE—Gail and our friend Lynne Reilly kept notes all day long and graciously allowed me use  of them in creating this blog entry.   There is no way I could have remembered all this stuff by myself.