February 10
Good morning, everyone. It’s Saturday and we’re seeing CNN reports of a massive snowstorm in Chicago. It’s 90 and sunny here. In fact, we were complaining yesterday how hot the house was when we got back from our day of site seeing. It looks like after two mild winters; we picked a good one to miss.
Yesterday, we drove to Manuel Antonio National Park, hired a guide and walked about an hour through the jungle. We’re so glad we had a guide because it would have been very difficult to see the wildlife without (a) the guide’s incredible ability to spot the animals and (b) his scope that brought everything up close and personal. It’s amazing how they can spot tiny bats under a broken leaf. On our walk we saw a really cool stick bird. It’s green and looks exactly like a thin green stick. We also saw several 3-toed sloths and another 2-toe sloth. Turns out the 3-toed are the grey ones. We saw it very well through the scope; with its grey spiny fur it looked more like a bird’s nest than an animal. Apparently, they sleep 18 hours a day and only come out of the trees once a week to poop and pee. Then they go back up to the tree for another week. The mom sloths are also not very protective of their babies. If a baby falls out of the tree…oh well. Mom’s a bit too lazy to go down to get it.
We also saw several different kinds of lizards, a beautiful crab, the bats, hummingbird (they can eat up to 500 mosquitoes an hour) and, of course, monkeys and raccoons. Those guys aren’t the least bit shy. There was a raccoon family of 4 that was strolling the beach looking for things to steal. Everyone kept their belongings either tied up or in backpacks so the raccoons wouldn’t drag things away. We saw them try a couple of times, but someone usually shooed them away.
The monkeys were everywhere, on the beach, walking the pathway and even in the parking lot. We mostly saw white faced monkeys, but we also caught some squirrel monkeys and one howler monkey. The howler monkey has a face like a gorilla…not very pretty actually. They hang out in the top of trees so they’re difficult to see and almost impossible to take a picture of unless you have an expensive camera with a great zoom. Since we’re using our phones, we don’t get many good pictures of them. The squirrel monkeys don’t really look like squirrels except they have a stripe of orange fur running down their backs. They hang out on the lower branches but move so quickly it was tough to get a picture of them as well.
Speaking of wildlife, did we mention our close encounter with a poisonous snake? It was on our walk to town from our guest house in Nuevo Arenal last weekend. It was dead but creepy just the same. Remember the old rhyme…. red on yellow kill a fellow; red on black venom lack…look at this guy.
After swimming at Playa Manuel Antonio for a while we hiked back to our car, stopped for a nice lunch then headed home to do laundry. Lynn had flashbacks to Venice where it took 3 days to dry clothes. Hopefully it won’t take that long this time, but the laundry didn’t dry before the sun when down. It’s now 8:40am and they’re still not dry. Hopefully now that the sun is out, they’ll dry before we leave for the beach. Today we’re just going to hang out at the large beach about 3km from here. They have chaise lounges and umbrellas we can rent. Since there’s no shade, it’s the only way Lynn can hang at the beach for any length of time. Instead of trying to find a place to park we’re just going to take the bus which stops about 50 meters from the house. Very convenient.
Have a great day everyone…. stay warm.