I knew we were to expect some floating debris AND that this was a river estuary, but we had no idea just how mucky brown the water would be and when they say floating debris, they mean, floating trees, brush and junk! Our trip in from the Gulf was uneventful and that is ONLY because we had a panga from the Costa Rica Yacht Club (CRYC) guiding us zig zagging down the river to avoid the shallow sand bars. All I can say is it's a good thing we did this at high slack tide, as there is a 8-10ft tidal range and there were a couple of places where Rob saw only 5 ft of water under our keel! It took about 40 minutes but I think this will be the last estuary for us for a while! There was even a boat that came in 3 days before us, who got stuck in the sand bank (he didn't use the panga service!) Once we got hooked to on to our mooring ball with the assistance of YC staff, Cheeky and Rafael, we flew our yellow quarrantine flag for the 1st time EVER... That is the flag you must fly (along with the country's courtesy flag) BEFORE you are checked into a country. In 20 minutes a panga came out to get us and we went ashore with our paperwork to meet with the Port Captain, Immigration, Customs and Department of Agriculture officers. Fortunately they were already there for the other boat that came in 3 days prior, or our check in might have even taken longer... As it was, we spent over an hour sitting, waiting, having copies made of our papers, filling out a couple of forms and getting our passport stamped!!! Then we had to make a trip (25 minutes by cab) to the Customs office of Port Caldera and wait over an hour while they got their computer/printer working to get our "boat permit" for Costa Rica. We can only spend 90 days in Costa Rica...PERIOD... No problem with that, as we planned to only be in the country for only another week or 2... Before we could finish, the rains came and rain, it did!!! By the time we got back to the marina, we stayed for dinner at the restaurant and since it was still raining, we stayed and played pool in their little game room until finally 9pm, the rain slowed enough to get to the boat without being drenched!!! That night there was so much CRAP in the water we felt we could almost walk on the water! In the morning the marina personnel were out early, trying to clear some of the big stuff off of all the boats moorings. The length of log they dragged from our bow must have been 30 feet long but the one they had eventually broke loose from our lines was a tree trunk. That we got a pretty good picture of it! While we all had earlier decided on only staying here in Puntarenas for 3 nights, just long enough to fuel up, do some major provisioning and sans cles to get their water tanks filled, Terri & I spoke with friends that were already here at the yacht club about a fantastic trip to a little town called La Fortuna to see the volcano Arenal right outside your cabin window (if the clouds are cooperative) and the best Zip line trip thru trees of the jungle they had ever been on! SOOOOOO what's 2 extra days of Triple Stars and sans cles sitting in mucky water...for us to see a volcano that last erupted in 1968, but sometimes spews some steam and red hot lava... We will just have to see how lucky we will be! Rob (who is really uncomfortable with heights) as even agreed to participate in this adventure, but has insisted he wants a nice memorial and his broken pieces taken to Maine when his cable breaks and he falls 150 feet or more, of course wearing his helmet! It's just a darn good reason we have a celebration... we've been living on the boat for a year (the 23rd) and Happy Birthday, Jan!