So, we headed south. Izzy chose not to come with us because she did not want to go to church. Given all the interesting things that we saw after church, I felt an hour sitting in a meeting, even if you didn't understand anything said, was worth the rest of the day. She didn't.
The church building was very small. We drove right past it trying to find it. Brandt was the one to see it. A senior missionary conducted the meeting. We downloaded songs in Spanish and tried to sing along. We did okay with the opening song, and the sacrament hymn, neither of which were too fast. The intermediary hymn was Battle Hymn of the Republic, which was very difficult to sing in Spanish. The tempo is lively, so we had a hard time trying to figure out the Spanish to the quick tempo. We were okay when we got to Glory, Glory Hallelujah.
There were three speakers, a youth speaker, a sister missionary, and a young father who brought up his son to stand next to him while he spoke. I was able to understand bits and pieces, some words that were similar to those in French, but we largely spent the hour not understanding. We chose not to stay for Relief Society and Priesthood.
Dave had told me not to bother to get a guide at any of the places that we went. He said if we went to Manuel Antonio, just follow a tour group along, and when they saw something, look at what they were looking at. I had purchased some small binoculars just for said purpose. When we arrived, however, we were ushered off the road by a very enthusiastic and forceful man who asked if we were going to Manuel Antonio. When I said yes, he asked if we had tickets. I told him we did not, so he said come right here and we can buy them, he would get them for us. We forked over what seemed like an awful lot of money, were ushered into a parking spot along the beach between two palm trees, and told our guide would be with us shortly.
None of these people had anything to do with Manuel Antonio National Park. Officially. They did get us tickets, and they did get us a guide, and they probably fleeced us. But by the end of the whole experience, it was fine. We saw amazing things we would not have seen without a guide, and while we almost certainly paid more than we needed to, I suppose we can afford it. I hate to be taken advantage of, but it is our first time in Costa Rica, so I suppose that's going to happen.
We saw some really amazing creatures in the national park. When I came to Costa Rica, I really wanted to see a sloth. We saw three, and one of them up close. It had come down out of a tree to poop and was only a few feet away from us. I was amazed! We saw a hummingbird nesting, howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys, these wonderful, blue-bodied crabs with bright orange legs, a snake, and various lizards. Our guide had a telescope that allowed us to see all of the creatures up close, and to take pictures through the telescope, and he had lots to tell us about the animals.
We were a group of ten people, but William, our guide, only seemed to remember our names. We would come to an animal, and he would immediately say," Katie, Katie, get me your camera.”
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We returned to the house, getting back about 4:00 in the afternoon. We read, we napped, we watched another torrential downpour. The weather here has been very accommodating. The days have been lovely, and the evenings have been wet. It has rained everyday we've been here, but never at a time when any of our activities were interrupted. I've been grateful.
After the rain we drove into Esterillos. We are staying in Esterillos Oeste, and Esterillos is about 15 minutes south. We went to have dinner at an Italian restaurant. We sat outside, enjoyed the cool air that came after the rain, and ate delicious food while talking and laughing. It was a lovely end to the day.
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