Palo Verde

On Saturday, Feb. 19th, we had a wonderful excursion to Palo Verde to do a river trip. We decided to be brave and save some money by avoiding the tour guides that charge an arm-and-a-leg, and try and find the river ourselves. It was crazy! All these windy, crazy dirt roads and four anxious kids in the back seat. We stopped along the way and found workers cutting down sugar cane (there are sugar cane fields everywhere here) and a worker was kind enough to cut a stalk of cane down for us and peeled it with his machete. The workers were all smiling and laughing... pretty sure they were thinking it was funny that we were excited about something they do every day! Anyway, the nice senor cut the stalk into four pieces so the kids could each get a piece. The kids at first didn't understand what to do with it. But when they figured out that they needed to chew, then suck, it kept them pretty entertained while we drove and drove. Britton said, "Wow, it takes like sugar!" We all laughed and said, "Britton, that's because it IS sugar!" "OH YA!" he said, giggling.

After a few hours of driving on endless dirt roads in the middle of NOWHERE, and finding little signs along the way that kept us from turning around, we made it! While we waited for the river trip to start, they served us raspberry juice and the kids admired the large iguanas all over the place.


We loaded the boat and our tour operator, Manuel, was a sweetheart. He didn't speak ANY English, so once again I was very grateful Jason could translate for us! I promise I am practicing my Spanish and trying so hard to learn the language, but a lot gets lost in translation still! Jason is indeed my hero here... I told him I am going to knit him a cape.

The favorite on the tour was definitely the white-faced monkeys. We were SO glad we had brought bananas because the monkeys saw that we had bananas and were climbing all over the boat, although apprehensive to come right to us. The kids, and their parents, LOVED those monkeys! It was amazing how they each had a different face, different expressions, and different personalities... so much like humans. Some were timid and mild, while others were grumpy and stubborn.

They were quite sneaky, too. Manuel set a banana down for a minute to point something out to us and the monkey jumped on the boat, grabbed the entire banana, then jumped back up into the tree and get this... HE TOTALLY LAUGHED in the tree as he looked down at us. We were all laughing, it was quite hilarious! We would hear a monkey jump on the top of our boat, then they'd make a little noise to say, "I'm here!" and then a monkey would be hanging upside down waiting for us to hand them some banana. They would always look us in the eye, always seeming to gain trust before they would come closer and/or grab a piece of banana. We learned after that, that monkeys never want to see teeth because that means anger. Looking back, I can understand that because another hilarious adventure with the monkeys ensued when a sweet little monkey didn't have use of his upper arms and dragged on the ground when he walked. He came right to the beach and we were leaning over to feed him bananas and another monkey was FUMING mad! His teeth were all showing and every time we'd feed his 'friend' he'd throw a big fit and even threw stuff at us and broke branches! We kept trying to 'tell' him to come get a banana and he'd get more mad!

We also saw several crocodiles, and WOW, they deserve some respect!!! Never messin' with one of those suckers. The song, 'Never smile at a crocodile' was introduced by Britton and the rest of us couldn't get that dang song out of our heads the rest of the tour. It was cute for the first 10 minutes, but after 3 hours we were glad to turn on the Ipod in the car! :) Britton and Grace wouldn't even put their hand in the water after we saw the first crocodile, even to cool off. Britton was not happy with me when I stuck my feet over the side for a few seconds.

We also saw some amazing birds. My personal favorite was the 'Rose Spoonbill.' It is quite large, as were many of the birds we saw, but the bright pink color and the unique bill was just something else.

The tour took about 3 hours, and the kids were trying to be good sports as the heat was taking a toll on them... especially Britton. Most of them were so dang excited about the things they were seeing that they didn't let the heat ruin it, but it was HOT!!!! We were indeed grateful to get back into our car with the air conditioning.

Jason tried his best to get us back to our home in Playa Hermosa, but we took the long way and ended up in a pleasant little city, Santa Cruz. We sat down to eat at a little 'soda' and realized that an LDS church was right across the street! Not the one we attend, so we were quite surprised. Austin and I decided to order stuff that Jason didn't recognize by name so we could be surprised to see what would come out of the kitchen. Um... don't ever order 'Sorchitas' when you come to Costa Rica, unless you like tortilla chips with ketchup and mayonnaise squirted on top! LOL! Fortunately for me, my dinner ended up good. Austin ended up ordering a hamburger!

It was indeed a WONDERFUL day and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. So grateful for this experience and thank God every day that I get to be here and draw closer to my family. The biggest difference is so many distractions that have been mostly eliminated. I'm realizing that as a whole, our family was WAY too caught up in all the lessons, etc., and we are going to simplify when we return!