Sat, Dec 1:  NCL Jade Cruise Ship:  Up early this morning.  Still at sea.  We’ll probably dock while at breakfast.  After our nice leisure breakfast we went back to our room and gathered all our stuff.  We met our concierge at the Moderno Restaurant lounge area and he took a group of us through the kitchen and onto a service elevator down to Deck 4 and off the boat, eliminating a lot of waiting at the elevators.  Another perk of having a suite.  We boarded a bus and headed to where we would board our historic train which was used to haul bananas from the plantations to the port back in the 1800s.  Going through the outskirts of Limon was eye opening.  A lot of poverty.  A lot of the “houses” are surrounded by chain link fences topped with barbed wire and razor wire.  But the surrounding countryside is beautiful. I call it jungle but it is really a rain forest.  Limon is one of the dryer areas in Costa Rica.  They only get 5 feet of rain a year.  Some areas get 10 to 15 feet of rain yearly.  No rain today though.  While we were walking through the rain forest we spotted a sloth.  Saw some monkeys briefly.  I don’t like monkeys.  They poop and then throw it at you.  And they steal stuff.  Anyway, I lost my key card somewhere along the way (probably a monkey stole it!).  That allows you back on the ship and it is what you use to pay for stuff.  I went to Guest Services and got another one. 

The mountains of Costa Rica

On the river cruise we went on, there was all this floating vegetation.  Turns out they're water lilies--some with beautiful purple flowers.

An egret among the floating water lilies.

Beautiful flowers we saw on our rain forest walk.

The sloth we encountered on our rain forest walk.

Met this woman walking through the rain forest.  She's from Belize and knew all the flowers.  She is getting off the ship in Belize.