Catching up

So, this was our day on Saturday, December 5th.
We got up fairly early in our wonderful hotel room. It´s easy to get up early here, since it starts getting light at around 5am. Anyway, we had a wonderful breakfast in their outdoor eating area, and then Guillermo and I took Estevan and Christoph back to the gas station where they had left their car. It was much easier driving the road this morning, since the weather was dry and sunny. We dropped the guys off at their car, and then Guillermo and I drove in the direction of the beach at Mal Pais. We never found a good place to see the beach but when we were headed back, we saw a nice place to look at the beach from. We parked, and walked out on the sand and took a few pictures, but since it was so hot, we sure didn´t hang around long.

Back in the car, we kept on driving towards Cabuya, and then down to Cabo Blanco National Park, which is as far as the road goes. On the way to these places, this young attractive girl was walking down the road and puts her thumb out as we approached. So, we picked her up and took her as far as the National Park. She was from Spain, and apparently travels all over the place and depends on the generosity of people. She looked well-off, and being so pretty, we felt she was a little too trusting. We got something to drink at the park, looked at the beach, and again, decided not to enter the trails since they are 7 kilometers one way and the day was already very hot. So,it looked like that girl found someone to take her back from the park, because we didn't see her anywhere when we left the park. We drove slowly back to Cabuya and stopped to get a drink in a little soda called El Coyote. In Costa Rica, they call those little places to get a bite to eat and something to drink, they call them Sodas.
Driving back to Montezuma, we stopped to look at a hotel Guillermo had stayed in several years ago when he took students down to Costa Rica. We also passed this GIANT strangler fig, where we stopped to take several pictures.

Standing at the bottom of the tree, looking up

There were bats roosting inside the tree!

This strangler fig was really huge!

 Then we got back in the car and passed a lady and her little boy, who both put their thumbs out. So,we picked them up and we took them quite a distance. It seemed to me a good thing for them, though, because when they had passed us on foot, while we were taking pictures of the strangler fig, the lady looked like she could barely make it. The day was really hot, so it was good to be able to help them out!
After dropping them off, we were then fairly close to Montezuma and we found a nice little bakery to get a quick lunch. Guillermo ordered a sandwich and I got chips and guacamole. When I finished with the guacamole, there were plenty of chips left over and they sat there on the plate. Well, a beautiful White-fronted Magpie Jay came and sat not farther than arms length away from me. Then, and this bird was really brave, he got CLOSER than arms length - I could have stroked his back!! We knew he wanted one of the chips, he was making sounds that almost sounded like begging, but we weren´t going to give him any. But he had his own ideas and all of a sudden, he jumped onto the plate, grabbed a chip, and flew off! It was so funny! We felt lucky to be able to see such a beautiful bird from so close.

After lunch, we just kind of hung around Montezuma. It´s a cute little beach town. We walked along the beach, checked out the shops, went to another section of beach, got a drink at a little bar on the beach and then found a nice big flat rock under some trees where we sat for a long time just watching the waves come in.

This is the view from where we were sitting on that nice flat rock.

And looking in the other direction

It starts getting dark here around 5:30, and we wanted to do the road back to our hotel before dark, so we headed back around 5.
Another great dinner at our hotel this evening, except this time, we were the only ones eating there. But it was nice anyway, and it was a perfect ending to a beautiful day.

That was our room on the right.

We saw these Howlers as were were driving back to our hotel.