Our first sighting of a Coati
Ok, for those of you who haven't put it together, Kelly chose not to remember the signs we all remember from the zoos about not feeding the animals. Coincidentally, the maid staff left fresh fruit in the room each day. Living in Chicago and having been almost completely weened off of fresh fruit we were cautious as neither wanted to spend the entire week in the rest room, especially after Kelly found a gecko in there. Not wanting to see all of this fruit go to waste, Kelly felt that the Coati you met above looked a bit thin and needed a grape. Little did we know this Coati was but a forward sentry for a much larger army hiding quietly in the brush just beyond our sight. They attack with the swiftness of, well coatis, in packs of nearly 15 and can scale short walls with amazing quickness.
Before we knew it we were hunkered down in our room watching the coatis eat our fruit, steal our sugar packets, and even try to drink our morning coffee. At that point I drew a line in the sand and went out to scare them away. You can mess with a lot of things, but a man's morning coffee, especially a caffeine addicted man's (yes me), is a step too far. Ok, not really. I let them have their way with our goods and only after the plundering was over did I venture back outside.
The porch was sacked in under 2 minutes. We offered little resistance.
As a result of this episode and my constant placing of fruit just outside our porch in the lawn, our porch at the resort became the morning hang out of a band of coatis (and no I did not check to see if a group of coatis is called a band or even if coatis is the plural form of coati, if you want to check on that I would be interested, otherwise just play along) for a week.
After a week of hanging out, we all got more comfortable with each other and really got to be pretty good friends.
That was pretty much the excitement from our honeymoon. Other than that we enjoyed laying around the resort, reading, eating and sleeping. Some more pictures are below.
View from our porch of Papagayo Bay
Views from the area where we ate breakfast every morning.
We went during the "green" season, otherwise known as the rainy season so yes it was cloudy much of the time. Some would think, ohh that is too bad. But those of you who really know me, know that I was thanking my lucky stars. Me and the dozen or so northern Euros that were at the resort with us. You see for about 4 hours a day, usually between 10 and 2 or so it would get really sunny. So we ventured down to the beach during those hours and promptly got pretty well burnt our second day there. So the clouds were a welcome sight and allowed us to lay around at the beach, me without a long sleeve shirt on, or at the pool without having to worry about an incredibly uncomfortable plane ride back to the states. Something apparently the Irish don't mind because I saw some of the reddest burnt skin in my life on those folks. I am not sure how some of them even laid down to go to bed at night they were so burnt.
The view of the resort from the main building. Our room was in the building whose roof you can barely see in the upper left corner.
Our room.
The beach looking out of Papagayo Bay toward the pacific.
Costa Rica is known for its rain forests and many people partake in adventurous excursions while on vacation there. Well, we didn't. You see we are more lay around type people than we are zip line across the canopy of a rain forest type people. But not to be out done we did leave the resort once. We went on a boat tour through one of the national parks and then toured a coffee plantation. Kelly kept asking the boat driver to get closer to the gators but this was about as close as he would get.
The boat driver didn't show nearly the same level of discretion when near the monkeys. In fact he beached the boat once and the guide jumped out and started talking to the monkeys. Seriously, this guy's animal call repertoire was unbelievable. Monkeys, birds, iguanas. Yes, I know it may very well have been a show since the guide is probably well aware that he could make any sound he wanted and all of the tourists in the boat would act like it was the actual sound of that animal in an attempt to hide their complete lack of knowledge about this part of the world. I, being one of those tourists appreciated the effort though and it seemed to work since he did get a couple of monkeys to get fairly close. (see picture of monkey below)
In fact, they even encouraged people to get out of the boat to get a closer look. At that point, I remembered that I was never a boy scout, probably couldn't figure out how to catch anything to eat despite the vast amounts of animals in the forest , and in short, would be utterly screwed should the boat decide to leave me behind. That and the fact that the guide told us it wasn't uncommon for the monkeys to throw their "waste" at you kept my butt firmly in the boat.
We then toured a coffee plantation. After hearing all about how they grow, harvest, and roast coffee we really hit our stride. It was then we sat down with the co-ops director and enjoyed a few cups of their fresh coffee.
Coffee on the plant. The coffee bean is actually inside the red berry. These plants are grown on the hillside and people lug baskets up the hills to hand pick the berries.
So 6 days after arriving we ate our final breakfast, enjoyed the views, took one last walk on the beach and headed home, where Kelly almost beat up a friendly American TSA agent. But that is another story for another day.
