Costa Rica Coast to Coast– Day 3

By wishwithjenn in Uncategorized on March 30, 2019April 15, 2019

We began the day with a buffet breakfast in the Laguna Lodge restaurant. Once again it was a spread of Costa Rican food. After breakfast, we had a few minutes to walk around or get our bags before we met on the dock. The only way to access Tortuguero is by boat, so once we arrived at the dock we loaded onto a boat and traveled down the river for about two hours. The river went right through the rain forest. We saw several birds and a troop of spider monkeys. Since it was early in the morning they were pretty active…swinging and playing in1 the trees.

Once we arrived at the location to meet back up with our bus, we loaded up and continued our journey.

The roads were rough, narrow dirt roads. The roads went through villages and past several farms, we even drove past several banana plantations. They stopped for a few minutes for us to watch the banana harvesting process at the Del Monte plant. Costa Rica is the second country in the world for banana exports. They explained to us the process of growing, picking, transporting, cleaning, packaging and shipping the fruit.

We drove a couple of hours on the bus before we stopped at Roberto’s Ranchero Restaurant. For lunch, we had the choice of chicken, steak, or tilapia. I had the tilapia and it was delicious….and for dessert. we had strawberry cheesecake and coffee.

Back on the bus, we rode for about another hour to a pineapple plantation. When we arrived we loaded onto a tractor “limo” and rode into the fields. The plantation consists of 3,700 acres. Sixty employees work in the fields and pick 54,000 pineapples each day. They pride themselves on being 100% organicLodge restaurant and they do not use any Argo-chemicals. After they pick the pineapple the cut off the shoot and replant them. A worker can plant 10,000 shoots in one day! It was so neat to hear all about their production, how much work it takes and learn how to pick the perfect pineapple.

When we returned back to the main building we were treated to pineapple, piña coladas (non-alcoholic) and pineapple cupcakes.

I skipped a major event because it wasn’t about the pineapples….on our way to back to the main building, we saw a 3-toed sloth hanging in the tree. We stopped and watched him. It was so amazing to watch his slow movements and to see him hanging from the tree.

After leaving the pineapple plantation, we made our way to Hotel Arenal Manoa. We got checked in and settled into our rooms, then we were able to enjoy dinner at the hotel restaurant.