Hey,
Sorry we haven’t blogged recently but we haven’t had much time. Right now I am in Patagonia, Argentina. This blog is catching up on every thing all the way from Costa Rica. In Costa Rica we stayed in San Jose for a few days then headed to Monteverde, a cloud forest. Then we moved on to Arenal, a volcano, and after that Puerto Viejo, a beach town. While in Monteverde we hiked around a cloud forest. We went on a morning hike, a night hike, visited a butterfly farm, tried waterfall repelling and climbed trees. On the morning hike we didn’t see nearly as many animals compared to the night hike but we did see some. We saw toucans, a tarantula, and baby hummingbirds in their nest. After the morning hike we went to lunch, someone told us there was a hotel feeding monkeys, so we went down to the hotel. There were about 15 monkeys playing in the trees eating bananas. It was really cool and they were not scared of people so they would come right up to you. That same day on the night hike we saw three sloths, one was alone in a tree, then the other two were a mommy and her baby climbing around in a tree. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any good pictures of any of the sloths that night. Later we also saw tarantulas, vipers, many lightning bugs and a raccoon like animal with a long tail. The next day we went waterfall repelling, it was awesome! We all got to go and we all were soaking wet. There was seven waterfalls and the longest one was 120 feet high, this one only dad, mom and I were able to go down. It was one of the funnest things we have done. That day we also toured the butterfly farm. During the tour we were able to release butterflies into their little butterfly habitats. There were so many butterflies flying around it was beautiful. The next day we climbed up vines that had wrapped around a tree. The tree died and hollowed out, all that was left was the vine/tree shell. The vine was easy to climb but once you climbed to the top of the tree/vine you were about 90 feet above ground. When I got up to the top I looked out and there were monkeys playing in the trees next to me. There were two other trees that you could climb but is was much harder and not as high.
The next day we left for Arenal volcano in La Fortuna. We arrived and it was raining so we got to our hotel and hung out all afternoon. In the morning we drove to a hiking trail around the volcano. It was beautiful but half way through our hike it started to rain again and rained for the rest of the day, by the time we got to the car we were soaked and muddy. It was worth it though. The next day we hiked up to a giant waterfall. The powerful waterfall landed in a little pool of water and made giant waves. You could swim around the edge of the pool and all the way to the back. At the back you can enter into a cave. In the cave there were so many birds, all you could hear was the birds talking amongst themselves. There was also a nice calm pool a little down stream of the waterfall, so we went and swam there for a while. On the hike down from the waterfall we saw about five toucans, they we beautiful.
After Arenal we went to Puerto Viejo, one of the most beautiful beaches in Costa Rica. On the drive there we saw a group of raccoon like animals with long tails and long noses. We stopped and fed them bananas and one climbed onto me, they were super cute! I was surprised how friendly and how much they loved food. Then we continued to drive to the beach and we saw two sloths alongside the road. They were adorable with their little faces. Then we continued to drive on to Puerto Viejo. There we went hotel shopping and found a awesome Christian beach front hotel. We also found out from the owners the local church that they went to. So on Sunday we rode bikes around town and then went to church. The people on the coast are mainly black Caribbean people so their church is loud and lively, but this makes church really fun. The church was on the pastor’s brother’s front porch and only had about 25 people. It was really amazing and the worship was awesome. They read scripture, then prayed for and introduced all the new people. The pastor gave a little sermon then they did some more worship and then the service was over. We stayed a while and eventually took the pastor and his wife out to dinner. The next day we went to the Jaguar Reserve, this is a rehabilitation center for hurt or abandoned animals. At the center there was a deer that would come up to you and lick you and you could pet him like a dog. Then we got to go play with baby monkeys. I held one that fell asleep on me and wrapped his tail around me. Later when I was sitting on a little blanket three baby monkeys came and played on me. After we left the baby monkey section we went to see a frog pond. We saw frog eggs, tadpoles, and green, red and orange frogs. We got to play with squirrels and come face to face with a toucan. The toucan was an escape artist, he could get out of any cage but once he did get out he would just hop around and bite peoples toes, but not fly away. So they eventually just stopped locking his cage. Next we got to go see baby sloths. Baby sloths are the cutest thing ever! They have the most cutest smily faces ever. Then we saw adult sloths and that was the end of our tour at the Jaguar Reserve.
We spent two more days at the beach then drove back to San Jose, the capital city. In San Jose Dad flew back to California for one week and we stayed at the San Jose YWAM base. There we helped pack food bags for families to get free food so that they don’t need to send their ten year old daughters out to the street to get money. We also helped teach kids church services in the dumps. It was really fun. We also went and saw a gold museum and a kids museum. They were both very interesting and fun. The same day we saw the Kids museum we also flew to Lima, Peru.
We arrived in Lima and went to our boarding gate where we were supposed to catch our flight down to Buenos Aires, Argentina. When our seats were called we went and stood in line. The woman checked our passports, checked our tickets, then asked for our visas. We looked at her and said we didn’t know we needed visas for Argentina and she replied “If you don’t have a visa I won’t let you on this flight”. So we ran down to the nearest computer and searched frantically for a place to get a visa but we couldn’t find it any where online. Then the flight attendant told us we needed to print the visa but the problem is that nobody had a printer. Well, we completely missed our flight at 11:00 at night and we had nowhere to go! We still didn’t even know where to go to get visas and even less where to print them. Thank goodness the air line was so nice they gave us the website to find the visa, gave us dinner, booked us a new flight 10:00 the next morning for free, and let us sleep in their VIP lounge all night. If they didn’t do this it would have cost us thirty dollars per person to get out of the airport, and by the time we would get out find an hotel sleep for 2 hours, find the visas and print them, then come back to the airport 2 hours early and catch our new flight. We were so thankful for every thing they gave us. In the VIP lounge we got every thing in line, slept and caught our new flight. We are thanking God for every thing he worked out for us. We arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina and now I am in Patagonia, but I’ll write about Patagonia later this week.
