Back From Costa Rica --- By The Butterfly Lady Bedford

What a wonderful time we fourteen ladies had on our Costa Rica tour !  Actually, I've been back in Bedford for a week but have just been trying to catch up with everything that had gone undone while I was out of the country.  Today I decided it was time to catch up on a little blogging.  As promised, I kept a journal and took lots of pictures to share.  Our trip did not start out well.  In fact, for a while there we thought it might have to be canceled.  Our 6:00 A.M. Delta flight from Roanoke was canceled due to mechanical problems, and all remaining flights that day and the next were overbooked.
     After much discussion and searching for alternatives, we rented a van and a car, with drivers, and drove to Lewisburg, W.Va., where we were able to get a flight to Atlanta.  There we were able to get a flight to Liberia, Costa Rica, not San Jose as originally planned.  We spent the night there, and were met early the next morning by our tour guide, Fabian, and his driver, Charlie.  They had made the four hour (94 miles) trip from San Jose to meet us early enough that we would not have to miss too much of the planned activities for the day !  That was our first introducion to the Costa Rican spirit that we encountered everywhere we went.  I would say it's characterized by cheerful flexibility in the face of need to change plans, willingness to go the extra mile, and an obvious love for their beautiful country.  As it turned out, we all agreed that "plan B" was a serendipitous change.  It gave us the opportunity to see the province of Guanacaste, with its dry deciduous forest terrain, which we would not have seen otherwise. As this was the end of the dry season, most of the trees were bare, waiting for the rains to begin in April to leaf out again. Interspersed here and there, though, we saw splashes of brilliant yellow and orange blossoming trees and bushes.  Much of this land had been cleared for pasture for cattle.  Fabian said this region is considered "cowboy country".  

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    As is true in so much of the tropical world, Costa Rica's forest cover has been greatly reduced in past centuries.  However, today Costa Rica is attempting to reverse this trend by encouraging the planting of native trees and by setting aside 28% of its land in national parks and preserves -- more than any other country on earth.  We passed several groves of planted teak trees, which are harvested for their beautiful wood.  Among the interesting trees we saw were what appeared to be living fences of what we were told are simply planted as stakes driven into the ground, where they take root and grow.  Fabian said these were often called "tourist trees" because they have red bark and peel twice a year (like sunburned tourists) .
    We drove through five of Costa Rica's seven provinces on the road to San Jose, taking Highway 1 most of the way, and passing by several of Costa Rica's seven active volcanoes. Despite a detour from the "Inter-American Highway" for road repairs taking us along the western coastline for a short distance, we arrived in San Jose in time for a delicious lunch at a restaurant called "Nuestra Tierra".  This  restaurant, ceiling decorated with old tin cups, offered fabulous Costa Rican food and music provided by two marimba players.  After lunch Fabian demonstrated coffee making the "old fashioned way" by pouring hot water through  a bag filled with coffee and suspended in a special holder. We then all enjoyed the delicious Costa Rican coffee, which is widely regarded as some of the best in the world.
     I'll stop here and attach pictures of some of the things I've described.  In my next blog I'll tell you all about the National Orchid show and our visit to the SACRO foundation, both of which we enjoyed after lunch.