Monday, July 1, 2002

The sun rose and we were able to see the view out of our bungalow. Wow. Absolutely incredible. And so many birds of all colors. We went to breakfast which was a buffet, which was excellent as we had waited too long to feed our daughter and apparently, she shares her mother’s lack of tolerance for low blood sugar and was pitching a big-time toddler fit. She was bad enough that I was going to try to feed her in the room, but Mark insisted we should at least try the restaurant. Our nearest seating companions did get up and move upon our approach, however. Once we got some food into her Genevieve was fine, and so we enjoyed the view from the restaurant and speculated on what all the birds might be.

Manuel Antonio is closed on Mondays, so we decided to spend the day at the hotel’s beach. We took the stroller down the road, which was quite steep and it’s a darn good thing the stroller has a hand brake!  The beach was crawling with hermit crabs, and lizards were sunning themselves when we first arrived.  The very nice attendant gave us our towels and we put Genevieve’s swim diaper on and let her play in the sand. She was ecstatic! Doing a little baby dance, squealing, and throwing muddy sand everywhere. At one point she even got a bunch of little Costa Rican girls in on the action. Meanwhile, the attendant ran over to let us know that monkeys were in the surrounding trees. Genevieve didn’t care about exotic animals when there was dirt to play in, and due to the close proximity of a large body of water my first priority was to watch her, but Mark enjoyed the monkeys.

We took Genevieve to the water’s edge (Big swimming pool, according to her) but she liked it a little too much and after her tenth attempt to get around me and rush into the waves I took her to higher ground where she played with her sand toys. Mark watched her while I went out to the water, and I realized how calm it was once you got past the shore so I took Genevieve. (As an aside, I found out later there’s a riptide on this beach so going out into the water, especially with young children, is probably not recommended). I think she got intimidated by all of the water around her and she was “all done swimming pool” so we went in and she napped in her stroller while Mark played in the ocean and I watched the hermit crabs.

After we pushed the stroller up the road, a joint task, we relaxed for a bit and then went to El Mono Azul for a very late lunch and to see the baby sloths a woman from the Fodor’s forum had told me they had there. It was too cool, I was expecting that they would be in the back in cages or something but they were right in the restaurant. The owner rescues abandoned baby tree sloths and then releases them when they are big enough to take care of themselves. When we were there they had three but they were unable to locate the third (they have the run of the grounds). One was sitting on his hammock eating until he got a bit curious and he started climbing all over the bulletin board describing the sloth program and checking out the donation jar. The waiter came along eventually and put him back on the hammock. Genevieve liked the sloths and even tried to share her Teletubbie Po with them.  You can’t take pictures in the restaurant, so we’ll have to rely on our memories.

After lunch, we headed into Quepos to get snacks for Genevieve and stuff for a light dinner. And then to bed.

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