Ya mon!

The next weekend, Caroline had an extra-long weekend because Thursday was a national holiday, so that morning we and many others in Caroline’s program went to the Caribbean!  We got to the small town of Manzanillo in the afternoon and immediately went snorkeling at the reef, our first time snorkeling in recent memory.  My favorite part was watching the little fishes swim around their little reef village!  Next morning up early for a 7AM tour of the rainforest with our guide Omar!  Omar grew up in Manzanillo and, like many in the province of Limón, has Afro-Carribean roots and is trilingual – with us he spoke English, with Ticos he speaks Spanish, and with his family he speaks a dialect of English of which we couldn’t understand a single word!

we saw one of these!

our guide Omar doin his thang

Our tour started off at our cabin (Omar and his wife are the owners), and on our way to the wildlife refuge, Omar had us taste and smell many plants and try to guess what they were.  I think my favorite was the cinnamon plant outside our suite (the next morning for breakfast I picked a twig and scraped the bark off into my oatmeal), and Caroline’s favorite was the citronella plant, which she promptly rubbed all over her legs and stuffed into her shirt pocket.  He also showed us a plant that closes its leaves when touched, which delighted Caroline so much that she spent a few minutes trying to touch all of them like a little kid J 

And then came the sloths – 11 of them!!  I still don’t know how he did it, but Omar would spot one and point it out, and it would usually take us at least 30 seconds to find it ourselves even when we knew exactly where to look!  Caroline was especially excited because they were the first sloths she’d seen!  The next couple hours were spent hiking, where we saw toucans, poison dart frogs, howler monkeys, terrifying bullet ants, a rubber tree, a hidden cave, and got bitten by lots of buggies!  Then we met up with several of Caroline’s friends for a tour at the Jaguar Rescue Center, where we saw lots of animals up close and even got to hold monkeys!  After hanging out with them for a while at Punta Uva, Caroline and I caught the bus back to Manzanillo in time to go swimming in the ocean during the sunset.  I don’t know why, but I LOVE being in the water while the sun is setting – surfing in Tamarindo, swimming in the Caribbean, water skiing back at Camp Thunderbird, it doesn’t matter.

Caroline and her citronella

see the baby sloth resting its head on Mommy?

The monkeys liked Caroline.

Emma's life is almost complete after feeding a sloth at the Jaguar Rescue Center.

 We went to the locally famous Maxi’s restaurant for dinner, where we ordered a whole red snapper (which Caroline worked tirelessly on until it was only bones left), and splurged on drinks!  The combination of a hot climate, local beer, and amazing fresh fruit makes Costa Rica the ideal place to splurge on drinks – in addition to a beer each, we shared a banana-mango milkshake and the best (albeit only) strawberry daiquiri I’ve ever tasted – it actually tasted like fresh strawberries mmmm!  But the best part of the meal was the group that came in and sat down at the table next to us – they kept saying “y’all!”  So we struck up a conversation (they were from Memphis), and it was so nice just to hear their redneck voices!  They were rather loud too, for which we were grateful because they were (inadvertently) hilarious.  I can’t do it justice in writing, but one guy was looking at the menu and asked in his drawling voice, “ay, man, where’s the pizza?” and his buddy said something about bein in the Caribbean and told him “NO DAMN PIZZA!”  And then when they asked what we were doing here, I used the joke my dad says twice a day and told them that Caroline was studying abroad, while I was studying a broad, and he roared, “DAMN YOU A LUCKY MAN!” hahaha we laughed so hard listening to them.

Buy u a drank.

Caroline did work on that fishy.

She was so focused on getting the meat off the fish she zoned out about how much to eat.

Saturday it was up early again to catch our bus north to the port city of Puerto Limón, picking up Emma on our way from literally the end of the road almost in Panama up to Tortuguero, almost in Nicaragua, where there are no roads.  From the Limón harbor we hopped on a passenger boat through the canals that was supposed to take three hours to reach Tortuguero.  The canals were gorgeous, with all types of birds!  We saw too many egrets and herons to count, plus caimans, monkeys, cormorants, jacanas, kingfishers, and toucans.  Even the rain didn’t dampen our spirits, especially when a couple on their honeymoon passed around a bottle of rum!  And then the boat broke down so we really felt like pirates sittin around drinkin rum on a marooned ship.  Eventually a mechanic arrived and fixed our boat, but our three hour trip ended up taking seven hours!  Good thing we had a great (and cheap!) bed and breakfast lined up for the three of us so we could put our stuff down before exploring the tiny town and beach and then eating a typical Caribbean dinner at Miss Junie’s.

this is what the canals looked like

this is what silly faces look like

this is what breakfast on the water looks like

Next morning after a delicious breakfast of fruit, pancakes, and eggs, we hiked in the national park, scaring dozens of lizards off the path and enjoying watching a playful group of monkeys up close.  Then it was off on the return adventure to Heredia, which required a boat and three buses and also took seven hours.

wazzup monkey man?!