La Playa Awaits...The Lizard Whisperer... Gringo Food in Paradise... QuéHamburguesa

Friday... ¡Viernes!  The last full day of our trip.  This is the day reserved for the team to do something fun, and to recover and relax from all the hard work of the last four days.  Several months ago, in the Connections Center back at Frisco Bible, the team voted between three options, and the winner was....(look above)... ¡la playa!.

BTW, if anyone was wondering why I repeated the title of the blog at the beginning....  The actual title cannot have exclamation marks in it.  This is an HTML thing.  No way around it. And the phrase "¡Qué <something>! is very much a Spanish thing to express degree of emphasis , and ¡QuéHamburguesa!...will come up later.  I wanted my ¡! exclamation marks back...

Ryan W. was feeling better today, but not enough for a long day out in the sun... he felt it would make for a longer day traveling on Saturday, so opted to stay at the hotel and continue to sleep off the stomach issue that hit him.  ¡Qué triste! (sad)

Our destination for the day was a resort called Punta Leona (Lioness Point), on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica about 53 miles WSW of our hotel in San Juan. It is not a quick 53 miles. LOL.  Traffic in Costa Rica is...interesting.  To say the least.  And we had to climb over a volcanic mountain range to get there.  I found myself wondering what Europeans explorers must have faced trying to cut their way through this terrain without the benefit of established roads.

We made one stop on the way, at the Rio Grande de Tárcoles, a river that is known habitat for los cocodrilos (crocodiles).  We got off the bus on one side of the bridge, took pictures and then joined our bus driver on the other side to continue on our way.  Lucy the guide said the number of crocodiles had been lesser of late due to the construction on the bridge, but we did see three of them, and a cool white bird, and our own shadows in the river!

Finally, there are tantalizing visions of the Pacific through the windows, and we turn into a security gate leading to the resort.  After a rather long trek on a bumpy gravel and dirt road ( Allison and I were bouncing in the back of the bus... I was having flashbacks to elementary/middle school days... that was a LONG TIME AGO!), and then Lucy had us checked in, we had our green wristbands, and we were off to spend a few hours on Playa Blanca.

Highlights of the morning beach:

• The monkey in the tree that was trying to eat the iguana
• The iguana jumping down from the tree onto the sand right by where we were sitting
• Alex coaxing the iguana up onto his arm  (The Lizard Whisperer!)
• Beach chair rentals that cost 9,000 for a pair!   (ok, CRC... Costa Rica Colones. $18 US)
• Guide Lucy setting up a hammock
• Guide Lucy falling asleep in the hammock.
• Rob & Denise waking up Lucy for no reason because of time confusion.  Of course Lucy set an alarm.  She knows what she is doing.  OOPS.

Playa Blanca (White Beach) faces the Pacific directly, and has a very steeply sloped beach, so the waves are pretty strong, and they crash right at the edge of the beach.  All of the team members who played in the water talked about how much of a workout it was to fight the wave action, and especially getting in and out of the water through that last break.  

But it was still fun.  In this author's opinion, there is nothing like the ocean and a beach for relaxing.  I have been pretty much a parrothead (if you do not recognize the reference, you can look it up) all my life, I think.  Whether you play in the surf, bodyboard, walk, sleep, read, or just sit under the almondrillo (surely one of the world's greatest shade trees) and talk to a loved one... it is a great way to reset.

After cleaning up our feet, we got on the bus and went to the hotel restaurant where we enjoyed the all-you-can-eat buffet.
As we were walking into the restaurant, Lucy pointed out a much bigger iguana that was right there between the road and the wall of the restaurant.   Alex the Lizard Whisperer decided to try and repeat his earlier success, and...well... lets just say it did not go so well,... a HISS, and a lunge... and the whole party scattered.  Big Brother Lizard was having none of that, thank-you-very-much!  

The buffet was enormous, with a wide variety of entrees, sides, breads, and desserts.  Your Blogger had a plate full of food, including local favorites, but for an appetizer, opted for an honest-to-goodness hot dog.  Was a nice taste of home!  Gringo Food Instance #1.

Then the group headed to another part of the resort where the beach was a sheltered lagoon, and there were freshwater facilities as well.  Dan, Ryan V, Boaz, Lucie, Tall Sam, Alex and Sam decided to while away their afternoon playing water volleyball, while Darren/Denise and Rob/Allison just chilled in the other swimming pool.   At one point, Allison and I got out and went looking for scarlet macaws... we found two sitting on a branch, but kind of removed from the swimming area and not easy to see.  About that time, Lucy came back and said she had found the sloth, so Allison and I put on our shoes and joined her.. just as we walked out of the pool area, the macaws took off and flew over the pool together.. they were magnificent!  (but unfortunately, too fast to capture with a picture)

Together with Lucy and the bus driver, we went and saw the sloth over by the river.  Lucy is studying to become a higher level of certified guide in CR, and she is very knowledgeable about many, many things in her native country.  She is a lot of fun to be with on this trip!

After the sloth, it was time to change out of swimsuits and start heading back, with one stopover at a big souvenr shop.

After dropping many, many thousands of CRC on mementos for ourselves, friends and family, we started the long drive back to the hotel in San Jose.  Dinner was Chicken Quesadillas and French Fries.  Gringo Food Instance #2.  During dinner, Guide Lucy was sitting with myself, Allison, Alex, and Sam, and we were discussing favorite Gringo Foods back in the States.  Since our son Matthew had come to CR in 2021, I related the story about how he always wanted to get Whataburger immediately whenever he would return from college at Hillsdale in Michigan.  Lucy got tickled about the idea of the name "Whataburger".  I told her it was literally like ¡QuéHamburguesa! and she just kept giggling.

After dinner, we had a short meeting where Denise gave us some very helpful insights about handling the emotions that we would feel post-trip, and some books we could read about poverty and missions...and then we called it a night.

And... although I will write one more short blog about our travel day, this was the last full blog report of our trip.  And who knows if any of us will return here again, so I will sign this blog entry off with some verses from my all-time favorite poem by my all-time favorite poet.  It is very, very germane to what we did today to recover and rest.  

The Pacific Ocean has already effaced our footprints from Playa Blanca, but our impact on Pavas and the children at HOPE will remain...by the grace of God.