Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
Waking up late and rushing to the boat.
We woke up late. Quite late. The kind of late that only starts your day with a feeling of late-induced regret. We had wanted to go in the pool, and Margherita thought the hotel’s gardens pretty enough to take photographs. Instead, we felt hung-over from flying.
The first stop was breakfast at the hotel. I’m not sure why I haven’t eaten rice and beans for breakfast before, but now I look upon waffles with a bit of distain in comparison. Trying the local fresh cheese made American cheese singles seem slightly less fancy.
We only had the morning to explore and took a quick taxi ride to the Gold Museum, which is well renowned for it’s gold. Basically, the museum has all of the gold that was left and wasn’t taken by the Spanish explorers. This is fortunate, because not only is it beautiful in the archeological sense, but also it’s beautiful in the historic sense. Just seeing these pieces put the entire native culture in perspective.
Puerto Caldera is the port where the ship was departing, and although the map seemed to indicate it wasn’t that far as the crow flies, as the Costa Rican cab driver goes, it was an entirely different story. The main "highway" is one lane going each way, and we were stopped for 30 minutes in traffic. Fortunately the driver was as gentile and kind as you’d hope in such a situation, but we just wanted to get on the ship. Two and a half hours later, we were there.
