suspension bridge
Costa Rica
Costa Rica is a country in central America sitting north of Panama and south of Nicaragua. It has coastlines on both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Within the country’s 19.730 square miles there are beaches, volcanoes, and jungles. About a quarter of the land is protected jungle. The capital of the country is San Jose. Spanish is the official language and money is the Costa Rican Colón. One US dollar was equal to 501.84 CRC at the time of our visit, but with the dollar’s falling value it is only worth 455.96 CRC now.
Puntarenas Costa Rica Cruise Port
Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam docked in Puntarenas, Costa Rica at the Puerto Caldera cruise ship dock. Unlike many cruise ship port stops on long cruises that go to lesser visited places, this one is not in a container port. Two ships fit on a long dock and excursion busses pick up and drop off passengers right in front of the ship. Puntarenas has a warm humid tropical climate. Highs average between 86 to 95°F (30 to 35°C). Lows rarely fall below 74° F. Total annual rainfall averages about 1603.5 mm (63.1 inches).
Costa Rican flowers
Cruise Ship Excursions in Puntarenas
Excursions offered from the Niew Amsterdam included Aerial Tram, Tarcoles River& Lunch; Sloth sanctuary, botanical garden, oxcart factory & lunch; Aerial tram, butterfly garden & sloth sanctuary; Rain Forest Canopy Zip Line & Aerial tram; Villa Blanca Storytelling & Cultural experience; Discover Costa Rica (historical landmark & botanical garden); botanical garden & oxcarts; Andalusian horse show; butterfly garden; Corobici river raft float, scenic drive & lunch; Sky walk in the forest; Jungle crocodile safari; Panoramic scenic ride (bus tour; motorcoach transfer to San Jose; Simply Puntarenas – historical and cultural sites; Tortuga Island & beach break; Villa Blanca cloud forest & photography experience; A walk in the clouds; Scarlet macaw sanctuary & mangrove cruise; Eco tropical mangrove river cruise; and Costa Rica’s countryside & coffee experience.
flower in the Costa Rican cloud forest
A Walk in the Clouds
We booked an excursion called A Walk in the Clouds. The cruise ship description was as follows:
TOP 3 REASONS TO BOOK
Spectacular hummingbird aerobatics at an open garden
A bird’s-eye view of the cloud forest
Agua dulce (a traditional drink) and a Costa Rican lunch
ABOUT THE EXCURSION
Discover the richness of the cloud forest as you walk along beautiful trails, with striking green vegetation morphing into weird and wonderful shapes before your very eyes. Your tour starts with a short downhill walk leading to an open hummingbird garden, where many species of these tiny, brightly colored birds casually perform spectacular aerobatic maneuvers.
After this mesmerizing and strangely addictive experience, head to the first of four suspension bridges that collectively cover a half-mile of elevated trail, offering a bird’s-eye view of the cloud forest. Each bridge stretches between 95 and 253 feet and is suspended up to 126 feet above the ground. As you continue hiking among rivers and cascades, your naturalist guide will point out the most outstanding features of the misty forest. Several bird, butterfly and small mammal species inhabit the area, and plants such as orchids, heliconias, ferns, bromeliads and other species of aerial plants are part of this intriguing natural habitat.
Taste some delicious agua dulce (a traditional drink) and enjoy a hearty Costa Rican lunch. On the ride back to the ship, you will stop at El Jardín to browse in the souvenir shop.
Notes:
Wear comfortable closed-toe walking shoes. The tour operator suggests a minimum age of 8 years due to the walking required (time and distance); however, parents of children who are enthusiastic explorers are invited to use their discretion. Not advisable for guests with mobility limitations. Wear long pants; bring rain gear and a jacket.
view of a creek from a suspension bridge
The Actual Excursion
A long line of people snaked through the hallway of the Nieuw Amsterdam in an attempt to get into the shore excursion meeting place in the ship’s theater for all of the excursions in Costa Rica. Since all of the departures were fairly close together that meant pretty much everyone with an excursion. Ours was at the latest scheduled departure time of 11:45 even though it was one of the day’s longest excursions at nearly 7 hours. After seeing the long line in the hallway we headed to the theater earlier than otherwise planned and made it inside before our scheduled check-in time of 11:25. If an excursion has more than one bus it pays to arrive in time to get assigned to the first one because generally the first bus gets the best guide. If there are multiple busses and you end up on the straggler’s bus the guide is usually horrible. At least that’s been our experience from excursions past. This one only had one bus, as did the majority of excursions at this port.
The first few excursions were running late on the times they got called out due to congestion in the hallways and on the pier and something going on with the Caribbean Princess docked next to us. By the time they got halfway through calling the excursions they had started to catch up, and when they got to ours they had gotten ahead as we were called out at 11:30. A perfect example of why people need to be there by the check-in time because those waiting for the departure time to show up may find their excursion has already left.
We had a pretty long bus ride from the coast up a mountain to the cloud forest. The narrow winding road had not been designed with large tour busses in mind. It took both lanes to make the turn on quite a few of the curves. At one we came upon another bus coming the opposite way, neither of which saw the other until the corner where both stopped abruptly before ours slowly inched past the other one as it waited. There was more traffic behind each of them so backing out of the way wasn’t an option for either bus.
restaurant up on a mountain
Eventually we made it to our destination, which started with what the excursion description said was a traditional Costa Rican lunch. It was raining pretty hard while we ran from the bus to the restaurant, but by the time we finished lunch the rain had stopped. It was cloudy the whole time we were there, but I guess that’s to be expected in a cloud forest. It’s in the cloud though so it’s actually fog at that elevation rather than looking up at clouds in the sky. The lunch included rice, beans, salad, Pico de Gallo and a choice of fish, pork, or chicken. Drinks were Costa Rican coffee or white or red juice of unknown origins. I had the white and it was quite good. Linda tried the red and said it was good as well. People who drink coffee said it was as excellent as the tour guide claimed Costa Rican coffee to be. According to him they grow only the finest coffee beans and pick them all by hand so only the ripe ones are used which makes very expensive coffee, most of which is exported to large companies in the USA including Starbucks and Duncan Donuts who then blend it with lesser varieties.
The guide was very informative and talked quite a lot on the way to and from the excursion. He mentioned their ecosystem starting at the coral reefs and working its way up through mangroves and other things up to the cloud forest and beyond, though I don’t remember all of the different stages. He also said Costa Rica has no army. I had previously heard them referred to as the Switzerland of Central America so no army and staying friendly and neutral to other countries is probably why. They have not had an army for 76 years since a former dictator disbanded it figuring if there was no army then there wasn’t anyone in the country who could kill him. They do however have army ants which may explain a t-shirt that said Costa Rican Army depicting an ant wearing army gear.
coatimundi in Cozumel
After lunch we took a little walkway between the restaurant and some gift shops out to a back deck. There was a coatimundi in the bushes and a worker putting parts of bananas on a tree either to attract those or sloths. We went to a place in Mexico once where coatimundi were unafraid of people and begging for food under the tables of an outdoor restaurant. This one was much shier. It popped out of the bushes long enough to nose around briefly down below the deck before disappearing back into the bushes. It was too far away and too fast to get a good picture of it.
zipline near the restaurant
There was a rack of zipline equipment on that deck because the place also does zipline tours, but that was not part of our excursion.
The busload of people got divided into two groups. Half followed our bus tour guide out onto the trail and the other went with a local guide. The driver was from the other side of the country so we waited for the local one figuring he would know more about that specific area. Probably a good choice because he definitely knew a lot about the place where we were.
We headed down some stairs and onto a trail which first passed by a bin of walking sticks which the guide recommended for anyone who might want something to help with balance as touching anything in the forest is not a good idea. Not even handrails as you never know what may be lurking on them and the forest was full of tiny assassins.
frog
We hadn’t gone far before the guide found a little frog sitting on a leaf. He said so long as nobody scared it away with a flash it would stay there. One by one everyone filed by and took their pictures and sure enough the frog stayed right on that leaf.
hummingbird
Soon the trail came to a small clearing full of hummingbird feeders. That area was their hummingbird garden. I thought we would see the sort of brightly colored tropical hummingbirds with really long tails like the ones I had seen at the top of Mystic Mountain (home of the Jamaican Bobsled Roller Coaster) in Jamaica, but the ones in the Costa Rican cloud forest looked similar to the sort we have at home, though they are not actually the same kind. There were not a lot of them, but enough that everyone got to see at least one and attempt to take photos of the speedy little birds. They didn’t hold still at all. Even at the feeder they just took a quick sip before flying off.
venomous little snake
The guide had some sort of light pointer to show us things we otherwise wouldn’t see. He pointed out a tiny snake wrapped around a small tree branch near a hummingbird feeder. He said it was a venomous viper that eats hummingbirds. He also warned us again not to touch anything in the forest because that wasn’t the only poisonous thing we weren’t likely to notice. A bite from that snake would send a person to the hospital for several days. It blended in so well to the tree branch that nobody other than the guide would ever have seen it if he hadn’t pointed it out.
poisonous caterpillar
Later down the trail he pointed out a very large caterpillar. He said touching it would also send a person to the hospital for a couple days. It would eventually turn into a beautiful swallowtail butterfly. I did see some small yellow butterflies in that jungle, but not close enough for photos. The caterpillar was quite large for a caterpillar. Though much shorter in length, its body circumference was probably pretty close to the same as the little snake.
bridge
The first two bridges we crossed had support structure underneath, but the rest were all actual suspension bridges. None of them were out in the open where anyone could get a good photo of them though.
switchback on the trail
We walked down a trail that was steep enough to have switchbacks in some places.
suspension bridge
There were a lot of bridges to cross. Some long and some short.
guide with an open cacao pod
Eventually we came down to a viewpoint just above a creek. While there the guide picked a cacao pod and opened it up to show everyone the seeds that are what gets made into chocolate. He let people each take one to taste, but at that point they don’t really taste like chocolate.
crazy looking caterpillar
Later the guide pointed out another caterpillar of a different species than the first one. It was also big for a caterpillar, poisonous to the touch, and would eventually become a beautiful butterfly. This one sported some crazy appendages. It sort of looked like a caterpillar version of a poodle.
bug carapaces
Along the way the guide found various things to show us including some sort of bug carapaces and the spines that were once used to make the blowdarts that use the poison from the little poison dart frogs. He said that poison can either be cooked out of the meat or will dissipate on its own from an animal after an hour or so making meat hunted with that poison safe to eat, whereas snake venom would render the meat unusable.
bungee jump platform
In one spot we could see something high above our trail that looked like half a bridge ending in wires. The guide said it belonged to a different company that used it for bungee jumping.
Though the excursion description only mentioned walking downhill, we also walked uphill on the way back up to the starting point. Some of the people not expecting an uphill hike were huffing and puffing by the time we reached the top. Due to the excursion description people likely assumed that the bus would meet us somewhere down the hill rather than back where we started at the top.
stairway on the trail
We passed over suspension bridges on the way up as well as the way down. The trails had lots of switchbacks and some stairways as well as all of the bridges. We took a loop route that only repeated the very first part of the hike between the restaurant and hummingbirds.
We got back to the hummingbird garden when we were nearly to the end of the hike. There was a wild hyderanga growing there that I hadn’t noticed the first time, but it just had one bloom. A bit farther up the trail I spotted a black caterpillar on the back of a leaf that the guide did not point out. I don’t know if that one was poisonous like the other two or not.
flower by the trail
The excursion wasn’t exactly the same as the description, but it was nice for anyone who enjoys hiking through a forest, is in shape enough to handle hiking on rough terrain, and can keep their balance well enough without holding onto anything for suspension bridges that are likely to sway and bounce a bit. The bridges do have handrails, but as our guide pointed out you don’t actually want to use them since one of those poisonous forest creatures could be sitting on it. We quite enjoyed the tour.
Not everyone followed the directions for this excursion because there were some wearing shorts and even a couple in sandals, but they weren’t turned away. The sandal people were lucky that none of the poisonous critters we saw were on the ground.
The people running this tour did not say to remember your bus seat number and don’t take someone else’s seat like they had on a previous excursion we took on this cruise. When we got back on the bus somebody had taken our seats and refused to give them up so we had to find seats elsewhere which isn’t easy. Everyone else plans to return to the same seat on the way back that they sat in for the trip there and we didn’t know where on the bus the seat stealers came from. Eventually found one that nobody else claimed. On the excursion we took in Aruba the guide said a fight broke out on their bus when someone sat in the seats where somebody else had started out which was why they said not to take anyone else’s seat. It’s also common courtesy not to take other people’s seats, and makes loading the bus a lot faster at each stop if people just go back to the same seat each time.
garden by the gift shop – still in the cloud
Probably somewhere around halfway back we stopped for half an hour at a gift shop. They had some little free samples of chocolate, coffee, and liquor. Behind the shop there was a garden on a hillside and a little enclosed butterfly garden that looked like it was in the process of getting an expansion. Most of the butterflies were perched either on plants or walls with their wings folded so they looked like half a butterfly. The ones that flew around were too fast to catch with the camera other than taking a video, which one person did. The seat stealers left their stuff on the seat so we couldn’t get our original seat back after that stop.
butterfly with its wings folded together
After another hour or so on the bus made it back to the port. On all my previous cruises having your ship card (or medallion if it’s Princess) was required for getting on and off the ship. On this cruise they just scanned our faces rather than our ship cards. We still needed to take the cards in each port though because getting back into the port whether on foot or on a bus they always need to see everyone’s card.
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