Day to be lazy
Today is a slow day, the only day in the trip just meant for the beach or whatever. I went to breakfast at a new place and had a nice talk with the employee who stands by the sidewalk trying to encourage people to come in and eat there. When he found out I was in a group he got animated about the group coming to eat there. As if! But I will try...
I walked on the beach but I realized I had forgotten sunscreen and then I had to use a bathroom so I didn't last long.
I went to a grocery store to look at the gimme caps (I somehow lost mine) and saw this book about Italian feminism for sale for $14 on the shelves offering toothpaste and aspirin. Odd!
This tour group reminds me of high school and I am not in the popular clique. And high school clichés persist through life, don't they? Sadly but maybe not inevitably.
Not many photos to post except my lovely gazpacho soup and the iguana and the giant red winged grasshopper near the hotel pool. And we saw lots of squirrel monkeys near the hotel and in the alley on the way to the beach.
I had the nerve to ask Anika to move further away when her smoke was coming into my space by my room. She seemed to give me the cold shoulder but who knows with the Germans (probably totally a prejudice). Someone said there's a t-shirt that addresses the difficulty of learning German (see pic)!
It amazes and saddens me that Anika has asthma and continues to smoke. She quit for 3 months but gained weight-- so she started smoking again!
We had dinner at the hotel's restaurant and after we ate and left, Daniel called us back because an anteater was near the restaurant! It was under the stairs to the pool but came out briefly. Its face was so cute! But no one was able to get a good photo, just a video (which I can't seem to post here). So here's a bad photo just to prove I'm not making it up.
I got curious about Costa Rica's economy and did a bit of research. Here's what I found interesting:
"The most important exports in 2015 (in order of dollar value) were medical instruments, bananas, tropical fruits, integrated circuits and orthopedic appliances. Since 1999, tourism earns more foreign exchange than the combined exports of the country's three main cash crops: bananas and pineapples especially, but also other crops, including coffee. As a small country, Costa Rica now provides under 1% of the world's coffee production. In 2015, the tourism sector was responsible for 5.8% of the country's GDP, or $3.4 billion.In 2016, the highest number of tourists came from the United States, with 1,000,000 visitors, followed by Europe with 434,884 arrivals." (Wikipedia)
For people like me who are sensitive to smoke, getting a lungful of it secondhand is so physically uncomfortable that it dominates whatever experience, I’m having at the time. That would ruin my tour experience if there were a smoker on it who gave me the cold shoulder when I tried to negotiate, not having to breathe their smoke.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure it wasn't a coati? They are very common in CR, we met one on the edge of a cliff at a restaurant we were eating in at La Cruz.
ReplyDeleteI would not have known the difference but I'm sure our guide would have known.
Delete