As I was still feeling under the weather yesterday, we cancelled the visit with a guide to one of the local wildlife reserves and took it easy, taking a walk around the local area and visiting the town of Santa Elena which is close by.
Today we visited El Trapiche which is a family-run tour giving you insight into the traditional life on a Costa Rican farm.
The tour began with a short walk through the farm to see the plantations of sugar cane, coffee, bananas, plantains and oranges. The guide then explained to us how they process the coffee they grow on the farm, as well as how chocolate is made, from the cocoa bean which they got us to taste (horrible and bitter) to the end result where they had ground the bean in to a paste and added sugar and milk (hmm so nice I had two spoonfuls of the liquid chocolate!).
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| From the cocoa bean held by our guide (not Peter in a nerdy outfit) |
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| Hmm liquid chocolate |
The final part of the tour was to see the experience of making liquor and sugar out of the sugar cane. We got to try fresh sugar cane, the liquor which was taste liked moonshine and was 60% alcohol, and then we make unrefined sugar which basically came out in a big lump that we could eat!
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| Peter sucking on a bit of sugar cane |
As the tour was quite interactive we enjoyed it as it made things quite interesting.
Once we had finished our afternoon tea back at the hotel we went out on a night tour with one other couple and a guide. This is basically where they take you out in to the middle of the forest IN THE DARK to look for nocturnal wildlife armed only with a flash light. Now I had visions of it being a bit like the Blair Witch Project with me and Peter running out of the forest half terrified and screaming but actually we really enjoyed it, as long as you don't mind moths dive bombing you the whole time, weird animal/insect noises all around you and being told off by the guide for accidentally shining your torch in to other people's eyes. And we saw some great wildlife.
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| Viper! |
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| Massive toucan! |
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| Tarantula! |
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| Insect that looks like a leaf! |
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