Orchids

This is a sample of just a few more of the 800 species of orchids in the Lankester Botanical Garden near San Jose.

The garden feature a trail that allows an easy walk through areas that feature bromeliads, heliconias, palms, bamboo, cacti and succulents, and more.

For visitors to Costa Rica who begin their trip in San Jose, the gardens are a nice way to get oriented to the different types of plant species in Costa Rica so that visitors will recognize and appreciate the plants that they will see in the wild for the remainder of their trip.

By the way, speaking of visitors, I should mention that an article in one of the Costa Rica newspapers recently said that although tourism is down a little bit due to the worldwide recession, it is not down very much in Costa Rica compared with other places. In 2008, there were more than 2 million foreign visitors to Costa Rica, which is very good for a country with a little more than 4 million people. Think about what the visitor traffic would be like in your country if the number of visitors over the course of a year equalled one-half of the number of residents.