We made it!

Today is the big day that we join the Windstar Cruise Lines sailing flagship, the 4 masted sailing vessel Windstar. 

After another great breakfast, this time an omelette made in front of me at the omelette station on the beautiful outdoor deck looking out over a small valley and the further away mountains, we left the hotel in San Jose and traveled west toward the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica to the port of Puerto Caldero.  (How’s that for a run-on sentence!) The 82 km trip took us one and a half hours which was good time according to our driver.  The road was winding, and two lane most of the way.  

After we got out of the city, the drive was beautiful, travelling through rolling hills and deep valleys covered in a million shades of green. There was little evidence of houses along the way, although there were some cows.  There were some market stalls along the highway as we got well out of the city, selling a wide variety of colourful and lovely looking fruit.    

Puerto Caldero is on the Pacific, and specifically on the Gulf of Nicoya, just south of the popular tourist area of Puntarenas. Puerto Caldero is the largest port for cargo on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica and really is just a port. Not very appealing to look at, but gets the job done. Iron, fruit, vehicles, tuna and general merchandise are shipped from here to the US and Asia.    

We transferred from our bus to a shuttle to take us through the busy industrial area to our awaiting Windstar.  The port was not conducive to picture taking but I’ll get a picture of her from one of next stops.  After “processing”, (immigration forms, luggage inspection, medical forms, etc) we were welcomed aboard by the ship’s hotel manager and provided with icy cold face clothes to cool us down. I don’t think the temperature changed much, but the humidity went from relatively dry in San Jose to off the charts on the coast.  

Lunch, excursions talk, life boat drill, nap, shower, unpacking, sunset watching, port talk, dinner, and walk around the deck all followed in rapid succession. Dinner was amazing – a tomato tart with creamy cheese, beef steak strips, something that tasted amazing that I think was a really light tempura battered deep fried basil, truffle fries, and key lime pie. It’s been a pretty uneventful day, but long and I’ll be glad to be rocked to sleep tonight.  

Tomorrow is a stop in Quepos, the home of the very famous and therefore very crowded Manuel Antonio National Park. I visited the Park when I was last here on my land tour in 2011, and did the hike, spent some quality time on the beautiful beach and even went for a sunset catamaran sail.  None of the available excursions sounded interesting so we’re going to go in to Quepos tomorrow to get in some walking time to work off some the calories I’m consuming!  

Happy International Women’s Day to all the amazing women in my life!