Day 4 of Caravan Tour - Macaws and Wildlife Hike

Barcelo Playa Tambor Hotel is an all-inclusive hotel.  This means you pay one price and everything is included - your room, meals, drinks (including alcoholic drinks), entertainment, recreation, etc.  It is a very big hotel and very popular among Costa Ricans.  We are staying here for 3 nights, which means we don't have to keep moving from hotel to hotel.  Caravan Tours has 3 groups staying at the hotel at the same time.

On its property is a wildlife center, where wild macaws come to roost.  On the first morning our guide, Aaron, took us on a tour of the wildlife center.  When he is not leading tours he is volunteering at a wildlife sanctuary.  This means he is very knowledgeable about all kinds of wildlife.  Macaws are long-tailed and colorful parrots that are found in South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbeans.  We walked through this sanctuary and saw many wild macaws and some that are caged.  The ones that are caged are hybrids and will not survive on their own in the wild.  It was a fascinating lesson on macaws.

We also saw other wildlife in this sanctuary.

Here are pictures of other parts of the hotel:

This is the first time I have stayed at an all-inclusive hotels.  It's becoming very popular.  I see many that are advertised in the beaches of Mexico.  The beach at this hotel is part of the Pacific Ocean and even though there is a long beach there are very few people swimming in the ocean.  I dipped in the ocean a couple of times.  The water is warm unlike water in the Pacific Ocean in California.  It is too shallow to swim but the waves are strong.  

There is a downside to an all-inclusive hotel.  The meals are mostly buffet-style.  It means you have a lot of choices but you also have a lot of waste.  I talked to one of the restaurant workers (using Google Translate and my new Apple AirPod 3) and she told me that recycle the waste into compost and gave them or sell them to the farmers.  On our way to the hotel we passed by many melon fields.  I have bought golden melons from Costco that were grown in Costa Rica.  I did not see any pineapple fields even though most pineapples you buy at Costco come from Costa Rica (except in Hawaii).

There are a few specialty restaurants at the hotel.  You have to get up very early to make reservations because they are often sold out.  A family from California and I booked a table at the Japanese restaurant called Miyako.  We were very excited when we were able to reserve a table for six.  That night we dine at the restaurant expecting to eat Japanese food.  It looked like Japanese food but it tasted anything like sushi.   It was the worst Japanese food I ever had.

There are a lot of activities going around the hotel late into the night.  They are mostly for the locals.  Some are kids programs and the families seem to enjoy it very much.  Me?  I rather spend a quiet evening in my room - writing this blog.