Limón

Luis left us at Cahuita, after making sure we were comfortable getting to our next destination.  Thanks Luis for hanging out with us.  You were a great sounding board for Marty (and viceversa), and the kids loved having you around! 
After another day at Cahuita, where we hiked out to some quiet water behind the reef, we got ourselves organized onto the public buses and headed out.  Buses here are great.  Comfortable, on time, cheap, and they go all the time.  We ended up with quite a convoluted route (4 different busses, and the mandatory boat ride), but it was great.  We started at 6:30 to avoid the heat and people and it was a great trip.  There was a massive cruise ship docked in Limon, which explained the hoards of crowds that had decended on Cahuita (we had almost decided we didn`t like it), and the we were thrilled when we got to have a double decker bus for 2 hours of our ride. 

Its a great tour just riding the bus around.  We saw the depot where Delmonte ships all their bananas to and loads them into trucks and then drives them somewhere.  I'm not sure yet how they get to Hazelton, but we have seen them in the processing plants in Rio Frio being packaged into their banana boxes.  Alot or rainforests have been sacrificed for the yellow one, and the reefs at Cahuita are all but smothered by the extra sediment that runs off from the plantations.   LImon is where the gas refineries are, and then there are gas lines, maybe a foot in diameter that run beside the main highway.  The pipes are propped up on clods of dirt, or concrete blocks.  I'm curious about the pipeline safety!  

I really like riding the bus, just to meet people and talk.  We met one woman who was heading off to school to study english and computers who wants to work in tourism, she has family in Tortuguero (where we were headed) and showed us pictures.   Then when we got off the bus and needed to walk to another bus station, she took us there.   An older gentleman in Cariari came to sit with me and Jorja while Marty and Caleb were off buying Tequila, hand lines, and knives (doesn't take much to make them happy).  We chatted about living where he does, he has never been Tortuguero, where we should visit, and then he bought Jorja a treat when he had to leave.   People have been kind and helpful all over the place.  My spanish is terrible, but I can usually make myself understood, and we have discovered google translate (type what you want to say in english, it spits it out in spanish!)   Caleb`s french teachers may cringe, but seriously it is fun to be able to talk to other people.  We have all used it, and Marty is particularly enamoured with the talk and it translates feature!!

The last part of the trip to Tortuguero is on a boat for an hour. Its one of the long skinny ones with a roof that holds about 30 people.  The first tributary is small and windy and it has to be dreged (by a backhoe that has tracks AND floats so it can be towed around the river).   I wish the boat part could be longer!   In all it took us 6 hours to get from Cahuita to Tortuguero and cost us about $40 for all of us.  See ya later! Pictures later, its a bit of a process to get the phots from camera to blog, and need good wifi!!Read more