Xandari

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The last day at Los Lagos. We brought our cameras to breakfast so we could photograph the basilisks and of course the male was nowhere to be found. But we did find plenty of females, and first Genevieve and then I managed to get them to run across the water, something we’d been trying to do our entire time there. The crocodiles were in fine form, and we took one last tour through the butterfly house and the kids got bitten by las hornigas one last time as well. We also saw for the first time the ant house and they a glass lid on the nest so you could see what they were doing with all those leaves. They make them into these geometric ball shapes (like a geodesic dome) and grow algae on them and then eat the algae fruit. Pretty cool. When we checked out of Los Lagos, I reached my hand into my backpack to pull out my wallet and when I took my hand out there was a gigantic beetle on it! AAaaah. The clerk was surprised at the way I flung my wallet across the room but he figured it out when he saw the bug (laughed at me too, I guess it was pretty funny). So they aren’t kidding when they say KEEP YOUR BAGS ZIPPED in tropical locations. You never know what’s going to crawl in there. The drive home was uneventful. We stopped at a fabulous craft store on the way home and I bought a wonderful butterfly mirror and really cool hat. By now Mark’s ear was really hurting him. It started to rain as we got to Xandari and then it turned into a torrential downpour. Our villa was very nice but also very far from the restaurant. Nice view of Alajuela down below, though. Mark asked the front desk at Xandari about his ear and they called a pharmacy who offered to deliver antibiotics to the hotel for $60.00. What a deal! So we had lunch and then watched Lion King in the tv room while we waited. I also checked my email and my neighbor had written me to tell me that they had found Panino, the cat that had been missing for over three weeks, and that she was alive and in my house. We found out later she’d been in another neighbor’s attic the entire time and was very scared, dehydrated and emaciated when she finally made it out. Cats are amazing. Mark’s prescription arrived, and we returned to our room to hang out. Genevieve found a caterpillar so she and Charlotte were happy. We went back to the restaurant for dinner and Mario was our waiter. We’d met him before during our last visit. That night the view of the city lights was very nice.