80. Row, row, row your boat…

Tuesday, 12 March 2019

La Fortuna, Costa Rica

The disadvantage of sleeping in a chalet with a corrugated tin roof is that when it rains it sounds like bullets being fired at the roof.

All.

Through.

The.

Night.

Just like being in a caravan.

An early start too.

The itinerary says, “Enjoy a boat ride down the river Penas Blancas.” Now, when you read that, does it scream a nice pleasure boat sitting in the dry with comfy seating admiring the view or does it scream sitting on an inflatable dinghy, wearing a life jacket, getting your feet wet and having to paddle?

Yeah. Me neither.

Most enjoyable though and immense fun.

It’s a very pleasant hour and a half trickling down the river at a sedate 3mph admiring the birds, monkeys and iguanas. Some rowing required though. Though as the unofficial photographer for the group (on account that I’m the only one to have brought a camera as have a waterproof dunk bag) it’s a veeeerrrrryyyyy slllllooooowwwww process putting camera away when instructed to paddle. If you get my drift. It’s not white water rafting by any stretch of the imagination. More the River Trent.

And that was about as exerting as today got. Humidity preventing doing anything more exerting than the short walk into La Fortuna for lunch and laundry.

Having collected laundry later in the afternoon, find myself walking back with a plastic bag full of clean clothes with my name written on the bag in large letters. Approach a bank which has both a security van transferring money to the ATM and an armed guard watching proceedings.

As I get nearer, armed guard puts his hand on his weapon ready to draw. Hardly look like a bank robber at the best of times. Let alone wearing shorts, flip flops and bag of washing with my name in big letters written on it.

Armed guard obviously thought otherwise.