The scenery keeps getting better and the animal sightings more incredible. Costa Rica is such an interesting place, I thought I'd share a few facts about it:

• A health care system that is ranked better than the U.S. Because there's no military, they put that money into their healthcare system
• 20% of the national budget goes to education
• 27% of the land in Costa Rica is protected from development and 13% of it is national park
• Half the size of the state of Kentucky
• 9 volcanoes, 5 of them active
• The most varied flora and fauna of any country in the world: 10,000 plant species; 850 species of birds; 200 mammal species; 35,000 insect species; 160 amphibian species; 220 reptile species (half of which are snakes); and 130 species of freshwater fish.
• 12 tropical life zones/microclimates
• 92% literacy rate. And a good portion of these people are learning English in elementary school.
• Tourism, coffee, and bananas are the most important industries
• Good-smelling roads: Many of the rural roads are dusty and unpaved. To keep the dust down, they spray the roads with molasses. In the midday heat, you can imagine the smell! Until we found this out, I kept wondering about the tantalizing smell of fresh-baked cookies in the middle of nowhere.
• Drinking water is potable: we've been filling our tanks out of garden hoses with no ill effects.

On Saturday, we went to one of the best farmer's markets we've ever seen anywhere in the world. Probably a quarter-mile stretch of vendors hawking the most gorgeous and exotic fruits and vegetables I've seen. Here's a quick rundown on some of the treats you won't find in your neighborhood market:

• Pipas frias = These are small green drinking coconuts with little meat and lots of coconut water. They are kept icy cold in a cooler until you purchase them. At which point, they take a machete and cut a hole in the top, insert a straw, and you're drinking cold and refreshing coconut water.
• Sugar cane juice = In the market, several vendors served sugar cane juice. They had gas-powered generators hooked up to what looked like a wood chipper. A man puts raw sugar cane into the front of the machine, and pulls the dry husks out the other side. The sugar cane pulp and juice drips into a cooler, where it is served in a glass with lots of ice. Very refreshing. Although I didn't drink sodas at home, a sweet, cold drink really seems to quench my thirst here in the tropics.
• Bebidas frescas = One of the most delicious finds is like a fruit smoothie. They blend fresh fruits with ice and water or milk. I've been drinking lots of blackberry, mango, and ice smoothies.
• Guanabana (soursop in English)= This is one of the most curious looking fruits I've ever seen. It's a football-sized green and lumpy gourd. Inside there are large black seeds covered with a fibrous, white fuzzy, and sweet flesh that tastes like a cross between pineapple and watermelon. It's both sour and refreshing at the same time, although the fruit inside looks a little scary.
• We have been pigging out on fresh mangos and avocados, eating them whenever we can get them.

This has been a social and fun anchorage. We've met several boats: Synergy (Joanie and Larry from Lummi Island, WA); Althea (Laurie, Mark, and Gaye from San Francisco); and the 55-foot Pegasus and her crew, who are former Floridians living in Costa Rica. Every night, we've had a happy hour or a potluck with this group of people. The Pegusus crew even invited us to their going-away party for their trip to the Marquesas. We sat at their incredible million-dollar house overlooking the ocean. But the most memorable part to me was the long freshwater shower and the air conditioning!

This area is pretty remote, with a beautiful tree-lined beach and a 10-minute hike through a jungle to a remote road. But, it's only a 15-minute taxi ride from Manuel Antonio, one of Costa Rica's prettiest parks. One day after a great day of wildlife sightings in the park, we came back to the beach and sat under a tree to have a cold drink. Looking up, we were surprised to find a sloth and a baby sloth hanging in the tree above our heads. We saw them every day when we came to shore. Nothing like having a neighborhood sloth!

Manuel Antonio National Park
Manuel Antonio National Park is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been and I couldn't get enough of it. This park is one of Costa Rica's smallest, at 683 hectares, but is the crown jewel of the park system. Incredibly picturesque beaches and lush forests.

We entered the park with a guide, which really increases your success of viewing the diverse and plentiful wildlife within the park. The guides are in the park every day, know where the animals live, and have the most uncanny ability to spot them. They can take you off the main trails away from all the tourists and have large telescopes. It seemed like our guide had an agreement with the wildlife, as well as telescopic eyes. Every step we took in our three-hour tour, he spotting a lizard that blended with the tree canopy or was able to find monkeys in the canopy by the mere shaking of a leaf. The next day I went back and saw significantly fewer animals then the animals below that we spotted during our three hour session with Leo:

• Jesus Christ lizards, male and female: These lizards walk on water, literally. To escape a threat, they stand on their hind legs and run across a pool of water. We have seen it in action a few times
• Iguana: Iguanas are everywhere you turn in Costa Rica. We have seen them ranging from 6 inches to 4 feet long!
• Howler monkeys: We have seen these guys in practically evcry stop in Costa Rica, and often hear them roaring in the jungle in the mornings from our anchorage. They make a loud, scary roaring noise that sounds like a jaguar or a big cat. The first time you hear it in the trees right over your head, it's terrifying. But we've become blasé about seeing 20 or 30 monkeys in the trees above. I am even working on perfecting my howler monkey imitation and can get a tree of monkeys howling within a few minutes.
• Capuchin monkeys: these are the small, darling white-faced monkeys that look like little old people and are the monkeys that used to be used as organ grinder monkeys. They are named after the monks in the Capuchin monastery in Italy, because they look like little monks with hoods and their faces peering out. We watched about 20 of these guys in the trees above our heads, swinging through the canopy and descending to the beach to steal a bag of cookies from one of the tourists.
• Three-toed sloth: This animal is fascinating. As you can tell from their name, there's not much action from these big guys, but they are incredible to see. They hang in the trees with little motion except a lot of scratching. Sloths are related to anteaters and belong to the phylum "Xenartha" meaning "strange joint". Evidently, they have extra space between each of their vertebrae. They are funny-looking animals, with a faced that looks like a painted-on smiley clown face. They have long (maybe 6 inches), yellowed, curved claws with which they hang from the trees. They have an incredibly slow metabolism and eat only leaves. Once a week, they come down from the tree in which they live and defecate only under that tree in order to nourish their own food source.
• Fiery-billed aracari: This bird resembles a toucan, with a long curved beak, but has a different color scheme.

Take a look at our photos of the Manuel Antonio wildlife. Many of these were taken through our guide's high-powered telescope with our digital camera. So don't worry, it looks like we were closer to these animals then we actually were.

Bahia Drake
Our next destination was reached by my first overnight sail. We left at 4:00 pm and arrived in paradise by 4:30 a.m. It was a different experience to sail at night, with the moon illuminating the water and the glowing trail of phosphorescence behind the boat. Nighttime dingy rides around the anchorages have also been fun. As the dinghy goes through the water, it disturbs a certain type of plankton that emits a greenish glow, sometimes bright enough to light our way. We can sometimes even see fish swimming by the boat at night because of their glowing trails.

I am probably overstating this, but this place is simply paradise. We had heard it from other boaters, but I still didn't believe it. A long, wide bay with white sandy beaches and a very small town. The locals are fantastic and friendly, and kids run to meet us whenever we reach the beach.

Bahia Drake is named after Sir Frances Drake, who passed through in March of 1579 on the Golden Hind. We're on the Osa Peninsula, one of the most remote spots in Costa Rica, with the most diverse wildlife and wildest jungles. This area is accessible by rough road only four months of the year (January-April), and the only tourists reach their jungle lodges by boat or single-prop airplanes. It's the kind of place with only one small grocery, no restaurants, no bars, and no nightclubs. But it's also the kind of place where you'll see a flock of 10 scarlet macaws flying over your head and hear howler monkeys as you're waking up at sunrise.

We went to shore to meet some of the local kids, and Marc ended up giving 4 local little boys a surf lesson one day. They had lived in this bay their entire lives and were thrilled to get the chance to surf. The next day, one of the kid's older brothers took Marc on a surf tour by boat, and he got to surf with four of the local teenagers at the local break.

Bahia Drake also has three freshwater rivers that feed into it. At high tide, we were able to take our dinghy up the river and see birds and watch for monkeys. The source of the river was an icy-cold freshwater waterfall, which was a great stand-in for a shower!

One day, Cathy and the crew of Synergy went on an expedition to Corcovado National Park, one of the most remote regions of the country. This huge, rainforest jungle reserve is accessible only by boat or single-propeller airplane and is the center for the country's biological research. The 54,539 hectare park contains the most amazing biodiversity and contains 8 different types of habitat. It's also the wettest spot in the country. Most of the protected species that you won't see anywhere else in the country run rampant through the park.

We paid a guide to take us there by boat, and it was more than worth the money we spent. This place is incredibly remote, and without a guide we would have been lost in the jungle within 10 minutes. From our boats, it was a one-hour panga (small fiberglass boat) and a beach landing in breaking surf. But the guide was great and the panga driver was incredibly skilled. We stood and watched crocodiles swimming across the river, then tiptoed along the side of the riverbank into the jungle. There, we hiked on deserted trails through the rainforest and listened to the sounds of the jungle.

During our 4 hour hike in the driving (but warm) rain, we saw:

• Howler monkeys
• Capuchin monkeys
• Spider monkeys
• Crocodiles
• Jesus Christ lizards
• Iguanas
• Hundreds of smaller lizards
• Chestnut-mandibled toucan
• Parrots
• Smelled the musky presence of javelinas, a pig-like animal that travels in packs of up to 300. They can be aggressive, so thankfully they stayed well-hidden
• White Ibis
• Great Curassow, a turkey-like bird
• Bats: our guide went to a tree with a rolled-up leaf funnel and started squeezing the bottom of it. Out flew about 7 tiny bats who had been sleeping in the leaf funnel during the day.

The vegetation in this area is incredible. Trees reaching hundreds of feet into the air, covered by a tangle of vines and strangler figs. Some of these are plants that you may have had in your living room as tropical houseplants… only here they're as big as your living room itself. Houseplants on steroids.

The Sirena Ranger Station has a rustic camp where you can pitch a tent and take tours in the jungle. Just sitting here for an hour, we saw hundreds of birds and lizards. It's sensory overload, because you just can't believe what you're seeing. Don't miss any opportunity you have to get to this park. It's wild and incredible and worth any amount of time and money to get there. This was quintessential Costa Rica and will be one of those days that I will remember for the rest of my life and smile.

Golfito
As of April, we are in Golfito for about a week in Banana Bay Marina. This is the last port in Costa Rica, and we're sad to leave. We have some boat repairs to catch up on. More importantly, our problematic outboard that was purchased new in Mexico in November 2002 has died once again. We have shipped it back to the dealer in Costa Rica and are awaiting news of the warranty repair or replacement. Stay tuned for more news of the beast.

Cathy tested out the outstanding Costa Rican health system on April 1. Marc and Cathy both picked up an ear infection somewhere along the way, possibly from swimming in jungle water. Cathy was in and out of the doctor within 15 minutes and the Cipro antibiotic is already working its magic one day later.

Next, we will continue our journeys south into Panama. We have heard from other sailors that Panama is as incredible as Costa Rica, but is what Costa Rica used to be 20 years ago. We look forward to heading to Las Perlas (a group of islands that are supposed to be incredible), through the Panama Canal, and through the San Blas Islands (inhabited by a tribe of indigenous people who produce world-famous textiles).