Last day of activities

Day 9 of our trip was essentially our last day! Tomorrow we are shuttled to the airport to go home.

We used today to see Carara National Park, which is on of the most important nesting places of the scarlet macaw and white faced monkeys! We listened to Roy Arroyo, one the naturalists from the park, who truly had to have done a lot of pot in the 60's! He started by talking about the birds and explaining how they live in pairs and mate for life, and if one dies, the other becomes a widow! This was fine! Then he started talking about how the macaws have a great capacity for love and new that love, just like humans. If we don't have love, we're upset and Ticos (if we hadn't noticed) are capable of a lot of love, and when you love, the boundaries of personal space become fuzzy and, WHEW! It was hilarious especially when Susie and I started communicating with things like "where is the love?" and "can you feel the love tonight?". Thankfully when Kelly sensed an opening to get us out of there, we jumped. Edwin was waiting to take us on a hike to look for macaws and the elusive white faced monkeys!!

I love these hikes; I don't think we took enough of them, but the humidity in the rainforest is crazy!! You are just wet from the time you begin until the time (if you're lucky) you return to some air conditioning! Drenched! I drank over a liter of water, and sweat it out during the 3 or 4 mile hike. I kept looking for a snake: I really wanted to know how I'd react if I saw a snake in the wild! No luck!

BUT: we did see a family of white faced monkeys!! Edwin had said he'd sent then an email and sure enough they responded!! They weren't too far overhead, and it was amazing to see!

After that excitement had ended, we started the journey back to San Jose, where we'd be having dinner and saying our farewells! I thoroughly enjoyed driving through all the suburbs and the city of the central valley by San jose. It's so interesting to see how different places are laid out. In Costa Rica, everything is done by road-no trains. It's sad they don't have trains because it would be more environmentally sound than all the vehicles on the road. I sat up by Edwin and asked all sort of annoying questions about the urban system that he couldn't always answer because he's a farmboy and treehugger! (I mean those in the nicest, fondest kind of way!)

We were late returning to the hotel and only had about a half hour to get ready. Susie and I did tag team showers and were ready in record-time (even Susie!!). Edwin had found us a restaurant on the top of the mountains to look down on the central valley. The view from this restaurant was outstanding and it was actually cool at the restaurant! It was one of the first times I didn't feel like I was drenched!! We got to see a cultural dance show and then danced till it was time to go. We got a great group picture with the city in the background; the rainforest was nice, but nothing compares to the lights of the city! We had to start saying our farewells!!