Three years ago, Anne and I were vacationing in Costa Rica. This was part of a series of post-retirement winter breaks where in the depths of winter we fled further and further south. Starting in Florida, we first left the mainland, before leaving the USA all together. We joined a tour for this trip. The international and Spanish speaking aspects of this trip led us to use an overabundance of caution.

Our weeklong visit was bookended with one night each in the capital, San Jose. Once out of the city, we visited three resorts. First in the mountains, then the piedmont and finally on the cost. We stayed two nights at Trogon Lodge, in the mountains of Costa Rica, elevation over 7,000 feet. It got down into the low forties at night. We have a space heater and receive nightly hot water bottles. This lodge is not where our tour normally stays, but it must book this resort often enough, because it is featured in some of their advertising videos. Watching those vids alerted us to bring wool caps and gloves to the tropics.

Down the road, is the Savegre Lodge and home to the founding family for this area. Their story was related to us by the eldest child from their second generation. In the fifties land was being given away under the Costa Rican homestead act. Two brothers married two sisters and then moved here. They were the pioneers. At first just the brothers came here and lived in a cave. After five years, the men built a shack and were able to coax their wives and families to join them. The speaker, the eldest brother’s eldest son hated the place. They practiced subsistence farming by raising dairy cows. Cheese from the cows could be sold for money. On one of these trips to town, a man gave them a plastic bag of trout fingerings. The trout flourished in the local river and soon tourists were showing up to fish. The family began a restaurant to feed these tourists. Then a lodge was built to house them. In the eighties eco-tourists began arriving. Never a smooth process, things continued to improve even until today. 

For Costa Rica I imagined it would be heat, sun and rain, but never did I think cold. Another traveler brought up their weather app yesterday morning at Trogon. It showed 41 degrees for the low and the app referred to the locale as Siberia, Costa Rico. A place where some locals refer to as the tropical tundra. That all changed when we came down out of the mountains. First though we popped above 11,000 feet in a pass. Then as we descended the heat in the bus was turned off and the AC switched on. We ended up glamping near sea level, by the Pacific coast, at Rafiki Lodge. Our room is a tent with full bath and real beds, tiled and wood flooring. Here we have temps in the high eighties and humidity that is even higher. Just like Saint Louis in the summer, but here with no AC. The restaurant and bar are under a palm thatched roof. Just before we got here, we stopped for lunch in a neighboring village that supplies most of the lodge’s workers. We were treated to an excellent traditional home cooked food and an eye-opening look at rural Costa Rican life. Their small yard supplied many of the meal’s ingredients. At the lodge, we met one of the owners, a young South African, who gave us a different take on Costa Rico’s eco-tourism. 

Manuel Antonio was our third and final destination on this tour. It is a national park and is on the Pacific coast. Interestingly, no one knows how this park got its name. One favorite theory is that he was an anonymous donor. Manuel Antonio is a relatively small park that is an island of nature and has become surrounded by development. It is also home to Costa Rica’s two species of sloths and three out of four of Costa Rica’s species of monkeys. This makes the place a major tourist draw. Our previous two eco-destinations were both relatively small, remote and isolated. Here we have a much larger human population and all that that entails. Our fanciest yet lodging is a six-story hotel that sports two pools and three bars. It is also directly adjacent to the park’s entrance.

The way this park operates reminded me of a bit from an old roadrunner and coyote cartoon. In this bit, at the beginning of the cartoon we see both antagonists lining up to punch in for their respective work shifts. At the end of the toon, they also punch out. Here too, the animals only have to host the humans for only first shift. Unfortunately, Montezuma’s Revenge struck Anne, and she could not participate in this activity. As bad as this was it was not the worst. Another couple got Covid and were booted from the tour. They will have to quarantine in country until released. The day’s nature tour was a human zoo.

Competing guides and their tours were crawling all over each other. It took us two hours to walk one mile. Mind me, it was an exciting two hours, but not one where you ever found yourself alone with nature. Still, we did get to see all of the marquee species.

At the end of the previous year, the travails of Twitter reached a crescendo when Elon Musk came up with the bright idea of selling Twitter’s vaunted blue check marks. These marks were supposed to assure the veracity of the tweeter, but selling this badge for $8 had the opposite effect. Fake blue check marked accounts sprang up immediately and overwhelmingly their purpose was to impersonate real people and companies for purposes of excoriating them. Many of these impersonators were funny, the one that I liked the most was Chiquita’s, because they respond.

Fake @Chiquita: We’ve just overthrown the government of Brazil

Real @Chiquita answer: We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Chiquita account. We have not overthrown a government since 1954.

We heard two local speakers. The first was the leader of an agricultural co-op and the other was a naturalist who is trying to save the most endangered monkey. While, neither man had any kind words for Chiquita, I think that they would differ on what corrective actions to take.