List of finds:
Ground crab
Hawk
Butterflies and dragonflies
Two toed sloth x2
Three toed sloth x3
Awesome plants with defense mechanisms
Primary forest
White faced capuchin monkeys (like Ross's pet monkey, Marcel, from Friends)
Mantled howler monkeys (my old friends from Panama)
Basilisk lizards
Agouti
Iguana
And more!
After walking for a couple hours, we went to the beautiful beach in the park (named one of the top five beaches in the world), found a quiet spot, and played in the ocean together for a while. On our walk out, we spied more animals but mostly spied lots more humans and were thankful that we came first thing in the morning. Our guide was, too. I think he was outstanding. He had a fancy stand-up binocular set on a tripod that he used to help us see animals in the distance. Mostly he was very collaborative with the other guides, but he quietly scoffed at another guide showing his group a vulture, like how pedestrian! His true specialty was in plant life, but he realized long ago that that wasn't what tourists were primarily interested in. At one point he said wistfully, "I could give a whole botany tour..."
We ate lunch at a cool falafel place then headed to the public beach. We relaxed there, I so much so that I fell asleep and was only barely woken in time to move my book from certain destruction by the rising tide! The waves were pretty serious, and a lot of surfers were out, which was fun to watch. We also saw the smaller, more endangered squirrel monkeys by the beach! In the evening, we ate a fantastic fish dinner at a local restaurant and came back to our place for a nighttime swim in the pool, free from the chore of sunblock applications. The other girls and I also practiced our "babe dance" from 4th year of med school. We still had the choreography down to "push it" by salt n pepa!
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