The view from my room of Manuel Antonio National Park.

This bird is a Great Kiskadee. I've also seen Scarlet-Rumped Tanagers, Blu Gray Tanagers, and some others but I have no bird book. :(

OK, so I posted the last blog today but I had sent it in an email to a couple special people and they were so excited to read it and wanted more. David suggested I actually blog it so I figured I might as well use this stupid thing since I never do otherwise. Lee calls it my travel blog. HAHA I wouldn't even be using the computer except for the fact that I am entertaining my family and keeping them updated. Otherwise when I get back there will be too many photos to show and by then I will have forgotten half the things that happened. Plus since it gets dark here at 6pm, there isn't much to do after dark if you aren't a drinker. We opt to stay safe and stay in at night (not too safe at night in some areas) so we're pretty bored when it gets dark. We compared it to after a hurricane in Miami with no electricity and nothing to do and you're hot and sticky. Except we have electricity and after last nights mishap with biting insects and my inflated face, we are sleeping with the windows/doors closed and the AC cranking in the bedrooms.

We would eat dinner and then go up to the rooms to lay down or something and we're like "man what time is it" It's 6:30 and we're all ready for bed.

So I revamped the email and made a blog and added more photos. "Balls" is so far my favorite encounter. LOL

Today which I had written a little about in the previous blog but I had written that first thing in the morning. So since I woke up at 5am, my face was still pretty swollen the whole day. I put ice in a baggie and wrapped it in a towel and pretty much went to town with it, literally. We had to go to town and I had it on my face. I really wanted to get a pirate eye patch but unfortunately Quepos, CR doesn't have such luxuries as this.

Around 9am we went into town (Quepos) to the farmers market.
Gringo. lolThese beets were like the size of my head.

This was pretty neat. Lee, all sorts of strange fruits but not too many that I had actually expected. There were the regular things we have at home, and then figs, flor de itabo which is the yucca plant flower I think, chamomile bunches, fresh herbs, guanabana, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember now.Banana Leaves.

David and I just finished fighting this long beetle in the room, I tried to throw it out the window on a tissue and it fell back inside and onto David's head. He is now sitting in the chair very far from the bed. We can't find the bug.

So after the market we came home put the fruit and veggies away, I got a coco frio and when we got home I had David break it open for me on the corner of the steps to the house (I thought of Lee and I trying to break one open at work with a screwdriver and hammer haha) so I scraped the coconut jelly out when I got home, it was so refreshing on a hot day. I didn't take a picture of it.

*We just found the beetle.

We rested at home for a little. Everyone read their books (I didn't bring one) while I bird watched and took more pictures.
Around 1pm me and the David's went to go check out this book store down the road but it was too expensive. So we decided to just explore a little and went driving.These roads weren't paved.

Some lush tropical foliage.
This is prime real estate right here.This was a little air strip about 10 minutes out of town.Cows.

These are African Oil Palm plantations. This land used to be owned by Chiquita and produced bananas but now there are Oil Palms.

Supermarket.

* Another beetle landed on the bed and sent David flying.

It's very time consuming so load these photos.

OK, so enough of this garbage, on to the critters.

Today was three-toed sloth and capuchin day!

David named the sloth "Speedy".

Here are the capuchins getting mangos out of the neighbor's tree. They are master mango peelers btw. This was like a whole family.

Monkeys look really funny when they walk on their hind legs only. They are like little furry humans with tails.

Ok hopefully I will have some more great nature photos tomorrow. We are going in the actual National Park so there should be good sightings in there.

Til next time.

Michelle