We had wonderful weather, around +27C today and no winds. Few clouds.

I got up at 4:30 today and must admit that the shower did more damage than good since the water was way too cold and I was way too tired. I got through it though and then got a bus downtown to the pickup point for my Braulio Carrillo tour. I was picked up at 6 am and the HUGE group of 2 japanese tourists and I, oh - lets not forget about the tour guide, Roger, and the bus driver, headed the 45-50 minutes drive towards the Limon province, through the national park and stopped at the Rainforest areal tram area. The first thing we did was to have a nice walk in one of the park paths before going down to the ranger station.

Did you guys ever see the movie Gorillas in the mist? Around 60% of the movie was filmed here.Or did you see the first Jurassic Park movie? Parts of that one was also filme in this area.
Well, the tropical rainforest of Braulio Carrillo National Park in Costa Rica looks very similar to the setting of these movies. This flora and fauna sanctuary is an emerald-green mass of vegetation, a saturation of tropical plants, waterfalls and trees that are heavily laden with orchids and other plants that cling to their branches. Even if someone has witnessed the splendor of a virgin rainforest before, no one that visits the Braulio Carrillo National Park can avoid feeling a sense of awe because of its beauty and magnitude.

Braulio Carrillo is located only 20 kms. Northeast of the capital city of San Jose. The park was founded in 1978 in order to save some of the area that was being opened up by the Guapiles Highway, and it was named after the third president of Costa Rica who ruled in the mid 1800s. The steep slopes are covered with thick cloud forest and beautiful waterfalls and can be seen from the road. The park consists of magnificent 46,000 hectare park and is one of Costa Ricas largest national parks. It is home to three kinds of monkeys, tapirs, 557 bird species and more than 4000 different species of plants.

At the ranger station we were expected with breakfast. The traditional dish with scrambled eggs and gallo pinto. We also got to see a three-toed sloth moving around. That is pretty rare since the sloths sleeps 19 hours a day !!! God, what a wonderful life. Sleeping 19 hours a day ! We also saw a small snake again, of the pit viper family. And this was before we started our tour. It seemed to be a good day, despite all the american tourists yabbing around talking as they were in the big city. When we finished the breakfast we went to see a movie about the Braulio Carrillo area and finally we headed to the areal trams and mounted them.
It took us about 1,5 hours to finish the tour and it was cool to drive through the rainforest in trams and not walk hehe. Considering my newfound information about the 37 venomous snakes that lives in CR and venomous frogs I am not too fond of walking through unfinished paths. hehe... We saw red bellied trogons, whiteface monkeys and huge amounts of butterflies. Among them the beautiful blue morphos.
After the tour in the trams we were taken to the souvenir shops, the serpentarium and the frog/butterflygarden. That was cool ! The serpentarium had a huge boa constrictor that hissed strangely. At least if I ever see a Boa in the loose I will recongnize that sound. I also learned that our beloved Fer de lance snake can become up to 3 meters long instead of the 1,5 I had thought it to be. EEEEEEEK.
Bite me !! NOT
But in the butterfly garden they had a lot of the small poison dart frogs and we got to take pictures and watch them on a close hold. There was also heaps of blue morphos in there and they are sooooo beautiful.

As we headed back towards San Jose the Japanese dudes fell asleep and so did I for a short while. Though I got to take a lot of pictures of the park and Rio Sucio. This River was in the 1st Jurassic Park movie !
I was left at the Telefericos office and headed towards the regular Internet cafe where I use to go at Cafe Digital about 50 meters from Plaza de la cultura in San Jose downtown.
I stayed there until Sunita showed up and then we went shopping for her lunchbreak. I also went to Pulmitan de Liberia to get a bus ticket for Saturday before I went to visit Turid and Alfredo Delgado in San Pedro. I stayed there for a couple of hours and Turid and I had a really nice long chat before I had to move on to the meeting point of where to meet Karla.
I have not seen Karla since 1999 ! That is a long time. We met the first time living in Montreal when we were there in 1995. She is the same old good friend I always knew. It was cool to meet you again Karla !
We went to have dinner at an Italian restaurant and I had pappardelle with salmon ! yummy. We had a great time. Sitting down I realized that I am in no shape to continue the party after dinner and I had to cancel on Sunita for going out tonight. Karla drove me home and I was far away in dreamland by 9:30pm.