The Mola (pronounced moe-lay) design pictured above is an ancient and famous art form of the Indians of Panama, and now other Central and South Americans have learned the art.

Very little goes unused in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is in the Central American area that is so good for growing bananas. They grow a lot of them. When bananas are harvested the whole tree is cut down. That leaves a lot of banana fiber to be destroyed. Instead of destroying the fiber they use it to make paper. The background of this and the other pages in the Costa Rica section of this site is a scan from a small piece of banana paper. They also make paper from coconut and coffee fibers. I found no samples of these papers.

When we checked the view from our balcony, we saw the dancers who had come to meet the ship, and some passengers getting an early start on their shore excursion to San Jose.

We found the Costa Rican people — the Ticos — to be very friendly toward us.
And although Costa Rica is not a wealthy country, they were not in our faces trying to sell things to us as they were in Colombia.

We're on our way to board one of those busses to go to the Los Angeles Cloud Forest on the Continental Divide. Come, join us, and see some of the things we saw that day.

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