Flowers, Plants and Farewell to Arenal

After our animal exploration in Hanging Bridges Park, we headed out to a small cultural community center where we saw an exhibition of Costa Rican dance and toured the lovely gardens.  Just after we got off the bus, our guide, Andres, pointed out a Scarlet Macaw in a nearby tree.  Wow!  I get excited at home if I see a cardinal!

We meandered through the gardens as Roberto, our host explained the medicinal values of all the plants and gave us each pieces of the leaves - like anise, oregano, or citronella - to smell or taste.  I was particularly taken with the enormous banana trees and flowers — especially since they were blooming so beautifully on February 18!  I’m afraid I’m not up on all their names, but here are some of my favorites:

Red ginger Lilly

Heliconia, "parrot's beak"

Teeny little bananas starting to grow

Nimble fruit

Gourds called jicaro - once used to carry water to workers in the fields (as in, "follow the  drinking gourd")

Red ginger

Red ginger

Pagoda flower

Soursop fruit.  We had some soursop juice with our dinner that evening.  It wouldn’t be on my hit parade.

Spiral ginger

Ginger

We made it under the roof just as the skies opened up.  Two of my fellow travelers took a turn at pressing the juice from sugar cane.  We sampled little cups of the final product.  I thought it was quite pleasant.

At the end of our tour our hosts served some traditional Costa Rican foods.  Throughout our Costa Rica trip, rice and beans were offered at every meal, breakfast included. My favorite, plantains, usually showed up at least twice a day.  The rectangular white item at 2 o’clock on the plate is boiled cassava, which is a root vegetable.  To me, it’s pretty dry and tasteless.  Later in the week I had some fried cassava, which was better, but still not something I’ll make at home.  The beverage is the soursop juice I mentioned.  It’s sweet and fruity, but not my favorite.  We’ve had lots of fresh, natural juices along the way.  I loved the mango, papaya and pineapple juices the best.

The next morning, alas, was time to bid farewell to La Fortuna and the Arenal Volcano.  On my way to breakfast, it poured down rain and clouds covered the volcano, but within an hour, we had beautiful sunshine and the volcano peeked out to say goodbye.

A twenty minute bus ride brought us to Lake Arenal, a man-made lake built to produce hydroelectric power.  Stephen, our captain, guided us across the lake to our next destination and the last leg of my Costa Rican adventure.  Stay tuned!