Change of Scenery

We don't have a car here in Costa Rica, and I can only walk about 3 miles a day with my 6 month pregnant tummy, so we end up living our lives almost exclusively in a range of about 4 square miles. After two months of walking the barbed wired and graffiti lined streets of San Jose, we were ready to see this beautiful country where we now live. So we and some other students from El Instituto de Lengua Espanol, packed our bags for a 3 day weekend at the beach. We took a bus ride to Tortugero on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. On the way we stopped to see a banana plantatione, and we walked through a butterfly garden. If you watch the video below, you will see how a 2 year old boy reacts to a butterfly landing on his hand. We also saw huge fields of pineapples. (I guess that ends my belief that pineapples grow on trees.) After the 3 hour bus ride, we rode a boat for another hour to get to our hotel. And throughout the weekend, we were able to see many animals, including a sloth, a crocodile and a spider monkey who jumped across the river above our boat with a baby monkey on her back. It was amazing to see her swing from tree to tree. Reagan loved running in and out of the waves on the beach. It was also the time of year when the huge sea turtles lay their eggs in the sand. We didn't stay up all night waiting to see the mammoth turtles dig their nests, but we saw their tracks on the beach in the morning. They were so big that it looked like a four wheeler had driven on the beach. And we did get to see some of the baby turtles crawl down to the ocean. It was a refreshing break from our studies, and we enjoyed seeing this incredibly beautiful country.