On Tuesday, Alex and I went to a zipline tree canopy tour. It was unbelievably fantastic! We didn’t bother having Luke come because we knew he would probably be a little too scared. We found out after we went that they can take kids under 100 pounds with a guide on the same line. Now we have to decide if we want to spend the money (even more actually) to go again. There are 3 zip line tours in the area and one of suspension bridges. We went on the Titi tour just outside of Quepos, and on Sunday we are going to Casandra’s tres birthday party at her Dad’s bridge tour, Rainbow.

Our weekend walk in the rain also seems to have killed the WIFI VOIP phone, which really is unfortunate. We bought big ziplock bags after to wrap everything else in and Claudette and I have started debating the merrits of buying another and having it sent to the hotel in Los Angelas for wqhen we pass through in mid October. (So far it doesn’t look good…)

Wednesday after school we had (another) rushed and unplanned lunch and then took a guided tour of the actual Manuel Antonio National Park. Entry fees per person, every day are $7 US, and the guide cost an extra $20 per person. It was a two hour, fairly relaxed, walking tour with many stops for animal viewing. The beach we walked by is very nice, and has much less people on it. Not that the other one is really crowded at all. The park beach has a crapload of crabs everywhere though. We really had to walk carefully and make sure we didn’t step on any. We saw several sloths including one 2 toed sloth which is usually not common to this area. We also saw some HUGE ant highways accross the trail, but my video work on one probably won’t do it justice. We also saw a small (1.1m ish) cayman (smaller aligator) in the swap and numerous interesting bugs. The bright red land crabs were pretty neat and the first I’d ever really heard of an “inland” crab. Our guide was unable to help us spot any monkeys on the tour. She found a bunch in the back of a hotel yard edging the jungle, just barely outside of the park, at the end of our tour, though.

Wednesday, just after supper there was a 7.7 earthquake in Lima, Peru. Claudette and I experienced another very slight tremmor in class earlier that day as well. The Lima one was very significant, and caused a tsunami there. There were tsunami warnings for almost all costal towns in Central America Wednesday night too. The house we are staying in is about 1KM from the ocean, (the government specified precautionary safe distance) and higher in elevation enough to be quite safe. Even so, the family we are staying with are considering spending the night at the daughter (sisters) home, deeper in the jungle. I am skeptical of the nessesity, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens. Alex and Luke are both in bed and I have almost an hour of homework that I should get done yet tonight.

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