Please Like My Tour!

After the boat ride on the Tempisque we had a yummy Tico lunch at the main house of El Viejo Wetlands. The third and last item on the schedule was what was billed as a cultural and tasting tour focused on old-time Costa Rica. This lovely young señorita met us outside the restaurant and tied a bandanna around our necks, telling us that we were now going to be cowboys and that we were going to a party. Gimme a break. The closest thing I've ever come to riding down the range is maybe the 8th Avenue subway in NYC.

It was actually kind of interesting for me. The first and second pictures are of an old-fashioned sugar cane press. An ox or two rotated a bar attached to a pair of cylinders that  slowly crushed the stalks. You can see the guide catching the fresh-squeezed juice in the second image. My father spent most of his career  in commercial sugar, the middleman between refiners and industrial users. He sold Pepsi-Cola all its sugar back in the day. This would have interested him.

The bottom image is of the neighboring sugar cane fields. There was one more bit after this, more about which tomorrow. 

Home late tonight. No more stumbling in my bad Spanish.