Hotel Brasilito Playa Flamingo

... of these back home. Right about the same time Susie was coming down from the room and almost stepped on an iguana! There are several just hanging around the hotel grounds and seem to the perfectly at ease surrounded by people.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out in the pool and then decided to head back to the beach to watch the sunset. Another beautiful Costa Rican sunset. Aaaaahhh, life is good.

When dinner time came around, we decided to ...

... the beach and explored a rocky area with some tide pools with tiny crabs and small fish.

Afterward we went back to the hotel pool where we met a couple from LA who had also found a great deal on airfare and were down here with their 2 kids. By this point we were hungry again (all that swimming builds up your appetite) and walked over to the local market and bought stuff to make sandwiches. On this little trip to the supermarket ...

... Susie's iPhone which now serves as Isabella's personal educational toy OH and the Mamma Mia! songs she loves to sing along to on the iPhone (much to the chagrin of those trying to get some sleep around her!!) People pay good money for this kind of entertainment! Besides, where else can you get this kind of in-flight entertainment for free?? A much better value than the on-demand choices you have on most flights. She managed to get several fans who liked her ...

... and lack of ability to transport their animals to town...Dawn takes care of all of that! We had a busy week. We spent a day driving around to homes rounding up candidates for spaying and castration. This of course, led to several consultations for various other health problems, usually situated on the hood of Dawn's car, or on the front porch of the homes. We dispensed flea and tick control, dewormers, trimmed nails and checked ...

Sooo...we had another nice couple of days. We decided to head out to Liberia after the rafting trip, because we wanted to cut out some bus time, and thought we would like extra time in Nicaragua anyway....So yesterday after a bus ride, we arrived. Liberia is a lot drier than the other side of the country, and seems to be a strange mix of Michigan style trees, tropical palms and banana plants, dry savannah like grasses, and waterfalls, volcanoes, and monkeys. Whew ...

... dinner, we spent several hours hopping from one hot spring to another...each was a little different from the next, some super hot, or with impressive waterfalls u could climb under, etc...though my personal fav was the water slide that went super fast - woo! The next day we all decided to go on a horseback riding trip up to a nearby waterfall. None of us had ridden a horse in forever so it was a fun, random thing to ...

... to cross 2 river and one road was closed since it was swept way and one point due to the rain. We made it to the Volcano Arenal, but unfortunately it was cloudy. We entered the danger zone anyway, took a walk trough the Forest and saw howler monkeys and spider monkeys (well and something that looked like a Ginnie). Since the Volcano was in clouds we went on to the hot springs ...

... with a cook up of this special chili salsa in the hostel, which had all the guests begging for the recipe. Basically it involves letting your tomatoes and vegetables fry for an extended period over a super crazy gas heat while sitting outside with a glass of white wine and chatting with the locals, burning the salsa to a crisp, but having that much wine that you cant really taste the bits of burnt stuff. The complete success of the chili salsa was an excuse to ...

... its value when we were surfing. Our two hour sessions felt like half a day, or month. There's something to be said for finding somewhere to lose time. I guess that's what Vacation is for. It seemed so strange to be going for ONLY 10 days! But 10 days proved to be a healthy charge for my sanity battery. 10 more days would have been the icing on the entemans brownie. Nick felt homesick & was ready to get back to Alaska. We found a ...

... Since it gets dark at around 17.30, there's much time to sleep and only on Wednesdays there's something like a party in a seaside bar about 15 minutes from my homestay. The beaches and especially the wildlife are amazing!! Geckos, Birds, Iguanas and other animals are everywhere (mosquitos too...) and right now, in spring, all the plants and trees are so green (it rains almost daily too, for one or two hours). Nevertheless it's ...