Monday, December 3, 2018- Puntarenas, Costa Rica

Monday, December 3, 2018- Puntarenas, Costa Rica The ship had docked with it’s stern to the shore and port side to the long cruise ship pier at Puntarenas during the early hours of the morning. The captain had said this would happen early because tidal currents limit when it is safe to sail in or out with a cruise ship. This is another port of call that we had visited in March with our South America cruise.  We were the only cruise ship at the dock and the sun was out. It was 82 degrees with thundershowers forecast for the afternoon.  There is very little space for buses in Puntarenas so tour buses have to back down the dock in single file. This creates all kinds of inefficiencies, but the Viking crew did manage to make the disembarkation for tours very smooth. Nobody was left standing out in the hot and humid sun.  We waited less than 5 minutes in the theater before our group was called.  

  The included excursion consisted of a short bus ride from Puntarenas to Esparza, the second oldest city in Costa Rica. There was a nice local dance school Folkloric program, and some time to wander around the square.  They also gave everyone free bananas, which remain a major export of Costa Rica. 

                     

   

We were back on the ship by noon.  Janet started coming down with a cold, so she took a nap after lunch, while Ben walked back down the pier and then up the beach to get some pictures of our ship while getting his feet wet in the Pacific.  The water was very warm- swimming pool temperature.  The sand is very brown sugar colored and soft, but there is a tremendous amount of plastic trash that gets washed up with the driftwood on the beach.  

 

We had another dinner at the Chef’s table.  Maybe the novelty is wearing off because the second time around, some of the wow factor was missing.  The theme was Ancient to Modern, starting with an ancient appetizer (Roman empire), not quite so ancient first course (Gallic), classic second course (lamb tenderloins) and modern dessert (brownie with space age garnish). The Gallic oxtail soup was interesting. It was deconstructed, delivered to the table with a puck of oxtail meat decorated with julianned carrot and turnip in the bottom of a bowl.  The server then poured a hot clear beef consumme over the top, leaving us to reconstruct the soup by stiring up the meat and veggies into the broth.  The lamb tenderloins were served with both a regular sliver of carrot and a purple carrot, reassembled with a green on top that was actually a crispy piece of parsley. Dessert was a brownie served with a spaceage edible coil spring on the top, paired with a sweet red port.       

We concluded our evening with Viking’s Liar’s club. We teamed up with Greg and Carol from Tasmania (from our trivia team) and Karen and Bruce from Carlsbad California. We won by being the only team out of 26 teams to get 4/4 words right.  Our prior Liar’s club experiences proved invaluable because 3/4 of the words we have heard before. These were Tittup (rhythmic bouncing movement associated with a galloping horse), Fulfart (full speed ahead), and Chubble (movement of putting on pantyhose).  The new word for us was Alipile, which, believe it or not, is a servant who removes unwanted armpit hair.  Bruce guessed that one, but was using his phone to follow a football game score, so it looked like he was cheating.  It took some persuading to get him to put his phone away. We won two bottles of champagne.  We ended up giving one bottle to Greg and Carol, and the other to Karen and Bruce, since we’ve been getting enough Mimosas with our trivia games, and the other couples enjoy alcohol more than we do.  We have been getting plenty of beer and wine on this cruise.  

 

Tomorrow, we arrive in Nicaragua, a first for us.  The boat arrives at 11am, so we don’t have to work so hard to get up at the crack of dawn.