Cloud number nine

Two weeks ago the time ran out on us in Quepos, Costa Rica. We had to leave our wonderful paradise.

I had to kiss my heavenly hammock goodbye.

During our vacation and on our way back to the airport we drove through wide areas of African palm oil plantations. These areas used to be banana plantations but they were destroyed by the Panama disease.  

This man is on his way to harvest the pods of the palm oil dates that contain this rich oil. This plantation work is nicely specialized. Some workers' job is to keep the snakes away. God bless these people, I would not choose that job myself.  Then you have the "leaf trimmers", so that this guy can come in and cut the fruit when it is mature. 

When he cuts the pod it falls to the ground and crashes in separate oil dates. Then comes in the next gang of people who collect the dates, puts them in bags and loads the bags on carts or trailers and they are transported to be processed. 

After work they apparently like to play soccer, because what you see in every village is a soccer field. I however never saw anybody playing.

We left a beautifully warm Costa Rica and came back to a horrible cold Montreal. Our flight was once again quite something. Air Canada does fly with surprising wings. We were supposed to change airports in Toronto and fly pack only the next day. However, thanks to an absolutely charming man who's wife is my kind of a girl, in other words a Finn, we got booked on a flight leaving 30 minutes later and we finally arrive home 8 hours earlier than we were supposed to. My first new year's wish in Canada were in freaking fudging Finnish. Hyvää Uutta Vuotta! I could not have asked for a better welcome both to Canada and the start of 2015.

I was thinking that Bryan Adams was probably flying Air Canada when he wrote his song, "cloud number nine".  

We can watch the world go by - up on cloud number nine