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One of the few military monuments in Costa Rica, celebrating the “five senoritas” - the five Spanish-speaking Central American states.

Costa Rica, Panama’s northern neighbor, declared war on Germany four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The nation’s Ticos (masculine) and Tica’s (feminine) had America’s back though its people were not generally disposed to militancy. When their President Calderon disputed his 1948 election loss, a six-week civil war ensued to turn him out of office.

The following year Costa Rica adopted a constitution abolishing its army. While they were at it, Ticas and citizens of African descent were given the vote.

Costa Rica is the size of West Virginia. It has a checker board of tropical sub-climates squeezed between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts which become cloud forests as mountains rise two miles into the sky.

It was Claudia’s idea to visit this tourist paradise. I was rooting for a French-speaking destination, but I switched my Duolingo to Spanish for French speakers.

We landed in San Jose, where 600,000 of the nation’s five million people live, the capital and largest city. Claudia crashed after two long days of flying but I walked around the city center. A national holiday had Ticos rocking to Latin bands everywhere I ventured.

In a square with hula-hooping dancers, I snapped a photo of one of the few military monuments in Costa Rica. It celebrated the “five senoritas” - the five Spanish-speaking Central American states.

Ninety years before the army dismantling constitution, an American adventurer, William Walker, leading a ragtag army conquered Costa Rica’s northern neighbor, Nicaragua, one of the “senoritas.”

Walker legalized slavery and U.S. President Franklin Pierce recognized his government. The Ticos of Costa Rica rallied the senoritas and sent an army to dispatch Walker with a firing squad.

The hula-hooping dancers below were oblivious to the fighting senoritas. They were living the Pura Vida.

Technically the term means “pure life” but Ticos use “pura vida” as a greeting, goodbye, or “have a nice day.”

Claudia and I joined a dozen grey-haired “Roads Scholars” the next day to tour the national theater, built by coffee farmers, and the subterranean gold museum next door. The latter showcased gold ornaments but really described the lives of the eight remaining tribal people, who only constitute one in every 50 Costa Ricans today. Four of these have living descendants who speak their original languages.

Unlike gold-rich Mexico, few conquistadors settled in the remote southern isthmus.

Costa Rica’s real treasures revealed themselves as our group traveled. In the rain forest along the Sarapiqui River our modern rooms were tucked under a huge communal thatched roof.

A troop of howler monkeys woke us every morning. As dark fell bird calls gave way to a roar from uncountable frogs and insects. It was a wall of sound that stopped us in our tracks.

And the birds! My favorites were the chachalacas, whose name mimics their raucous calls. We pulled our cell phone cameras out at every flash of scarlet, emerald or blue that streaked through the forest canopy. Colorful poison dart frogs and leaf cutter ants skittered underfoot.

Local experts told us about rain forests, volcanos, and the flora and fauna. Three meals a day, overflowing with fresh fruit, were served that we could not finish.

The tourism industry kicked into high gear in the 1980s, when Costa Rica began taking nature’s preservation seriously. Land clearing had lowered the tree cover to 25%. It has since rebounded so that forests now cover more than 50% of the nation despite heavy competition with pineapple cultivation.

At the turn of the new century, Costa Rica made the fight against global warming a national objective to preserve its cloud forests as tourism enriched its economy.

Bird viewing stands stocked with fruit to attract avian color are everywhere. We saw warblers migrating north to Duluth. Europeans, whose continent hosts no hummingbirds, come to marvel at the scores of species which sip nectar from Costa Rica’s dramatic heliconias.

I was enchanted at the Arenal volcano by our continent’s largest bluejays with cox combs and orioles who built bowling ball-sized nests dangling from the emergent layer at the top of the rain forest.

And our prayers were answered when we gathered below a three-toed sloth performing a slow DMV-worthy arial ballet as it plucked leaves from a cecropia tree. It seemed unperturbed by the biting ants which guarded hollow tree limbs.

I overindulged in fruit and had to miss our Pacific outrigger excursion on the last day. Instead, I read the chapter in William Hitchcock’s Age of Eisenhower, about the CIA overthrowing senorita Guatemala’s democracy.

Our final speaker was Michael Quesada, a naturalist whose parents bird-napped chicks by the Tarcoles River. The black-market pet trade once supplemented many people’s incomes.

After meeting Dr. Christopher Vaughn, of the University of Wisconsin, grade schooler Michael was enlisted to save the birds.

Dr. Vaughn, who had come to study the disappearance of scarlet macaws, decided to challenge poaching with coloring books about birds, which explained how to bring color and bird song back to the forests. And for the parents he created paying jobs in the environmental economy.

Sound science and education rescued the scarlet macaws.

Before his intervention scarlet macaws near the Tarcoles River numbered about 20. Today there are 500, some of which roosted next to our hotel.

That’s the Pura Vida.

Just for fun Google “Harry Welty is a republican traitor.”