6/10 -- We Meet the Group and Set Out

 I often joke that I should travel to places where I don't like the food to lose weight and breakfast seemed like maybe I had found a way to take off 10 pounds. We drove to Alajuela and walked around, tasting several interesting fruits and taking in part of a Sunday concert in the park. 

Bright Blue house off the square

Sunday concert

Primary Catholic church of Alajuela

Back in the bus, we headed to a coffee plantation near one of the volcanoes. Before the tour started, we had time to explore a butterfly garden, which was really special. 

We learned about how coffee is grown, harvested, and processed. I found it interesting that while coffee trees can live 100 years, they are only considered productive for up to 25. We sampled and bought a bag of coffee and had lunch at the plantation.

Green Coffee Berries -- Ripe when they are red

Picking basket -- fills the little metal basket below about twice

Red baskets -- small and larger -- measure how many berries
fall into the pit below. Better berries are heavier and sink when
the pit is filled with water. Berries are suctioned from the bottom
and graded by weight and size.

Next we headed for the hotel. This is the rainy season, and it is normally pretty nice in the morning and wet in the afternoon. Today was no exception -- started to sprinkle around noon and quickly became a downpour then lightened up. This pattern repeated several time through dinner. We had raincoats with us, but had left our rain pants behind, to our sorrow. We stopped at a waterfall and our legs got totally drenched trying to take photos. A little later, we stopped at a restaurant for a bio break and snack and tried to photograph the hummingbirds flitting around the  feeders.

Our hotel, El Toucano, near Quesada, has thermal pools fed by hot springs and some of our group enjoyed them but I have never been a fan of soaking in a hot tub while getting rained on. The OAT literature says Costa Rica gets 9 inches of rain in June, but it felt like we got 2-3 today with no end in sight. We also found lunch and dinner to be quite tasty, so my weight loss program may be in peril. I thought the typical diet of rice (ok) and beans (yuk) and plantains(??) would not be that palatable, but the salads and chicken dishes have been great.