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Thursday morning we packed all our stuff into shared suitcases and then let Uncle Don figure out how to magically fit it all into the van. Then we headed out for lunch with Aleyda at her uncle’s restaurant. The food was very yummy. The vegetarians had beans, rice, and fried banana. Everyone else had sancocho a chicken soup made from, as I understand it, old, tough chickens. They all concur that it was delicious.

Then we headed out on the couple hour trip to El Valle. Allie and I hitched a ride with Kendi and Miguel so the trip was more comfortable for everyone involved. The bed and breakfast we stayed at, La Rana Dorada (or Golden Frog Inn) was beautiful. It had lots of incredible flowers and trees, a little kitchen for us to use and lots of seating and especially awesome hammocks all around with great views overlooking the gorgeous surroundings.

The first night they had a little welcome “happy hour” with drinks and snacks. It was meant to happen while watching the sunset but the thick, low hanging clouds made a view of the sunset impossible. It was still a lovely evening (so nice in fact, that we decided to repeat it the next evening ourselves). Then we walked down the road to a local and highly recommend pizza place. We had a great dinner and dessert.

El Valle is set in the valley of an extinct volcano and it just high enough that while still being extremely humid it is definitely cooler. My guide book says that people here have fireplaces, but the need for that just seems insane!

We had been on a serious sloth hunt for days. I thought I really wanted to see one, but my desire was nothing in comparison to Aunt Trudi’s and Allie’s. We had looked diligently on every hike, we had spent time searching at the Causeway, and Allie had stayed awake the whole drive to El Valle to be able and watch the trees. No luck so far. We told the hotel owners that we wanted to see one so they set the gardener to keeping his eyes open.

We were not disappointed. He found one in a tree just behind the hotel our first morning there. We all ran up with cameras to look. Her back was to us and you could barely see her face, but we were way excited anyway. Turns out, sloths aren’t much to watch, as they do pretty much nothing. The next morning she was in the same tree and we could see her body much better as she hung down and she was even moving a bit. That was way cool. We didn’t see her again after that.

Friday we went to the local zoo. We were prepared to see the animals in very small cages, which they were. That part was quite sad, but the place is doing good work with frogs, especially the well know and almost extinct rana dorada. The frog section was really interesting! We spent quite a long time checking out the different kinds of frogs and toads.

In the evening we had our own mini happy hour with snacks, wine, beer and accidentally some lovely apple champagne which Allie picked out thinking it was sparkling apple cider. We did it on the patio outside a couple of the rooms, blocked off the stairs so Isaac could crawl around and kept ourselves well out of the pouring rain.

I started feeling a bit ill and didn’t really make it through dinner which we’d picked up to eat in our cozy little set up. The next morning I was feeling even worse. I pretty much gave up on eating all together and just tried to make it through without missing out on too much of the fun stuff.

We had intended to go for a decent hike and then to do some zip lines, but I just wasn’t feeling up to it and so we put it off and then eventually decided not to do it.
We went for a small hike up to some waterfalls. It was beautiful, but it was up lots of rocks and because of all the rain it was pretty slippery. On a normal day it would have been fine, but my body ached, and I had very little energy. So after about 20 mins or so I decided it was time to head back. Everyone else went to lunch and then to check out the local artisan market, but I slept in the car and then when we went back to the hotel and I pretty much slept the day away.

We had scheduled a night hike with a local biologist for this night, put it was pouring down rain with healthy doses of both lightning and thunder. It went on and on, all afternoon and night. Even the people from there said it was excessive. So we cancelled the hike. I was glad because I don’t think I would have been up for it anyway.

Sunday morning Kendra and Miguel took Uncle Don and Aunt Trudi to go visit Miguel’s grandma, Rebecca and a town full of other relatives. The amount of driving in one day made it hard to take the boys and though I was feeling slightly improved I didn’t think I could handle the curves so the rest of us stayed behind. They all had a fantastic time and I was sad I hadn’t made it out to see Rebecca again. She is amazing and I just can’t get enough of hanging out with her.

Instead we went on a small hike from our hotel to visit the “square trees” we had been warned not to have high expectations. I would say a couple of them were mostly square-ish. The walk was nice nonetheless. We saw crazy leaf cutter path right into the forest and you could see very clearly how they clean their trails. We also saw their gigantic hill colony. And Elissa found Nathan a vine that he could actually swing on like Tarzan. That made his day!

Even though I was feeling a bit better I decided to try the health clinic. You know I just love to check them out in every country! I had them drop me off while they went to lunch nearby. It actually went quite well. A nurse took my info and then I waited to see a doctor. He wrote me prescriptions for 5 things and they sent me on my way. I tried to pay but they insisted that a consultation was free.

I had thought that I would at least use the pharmacy attached to the clinic to get the medication since the other had been free, but I was pretty sure it was closed. And about then a couple of guards came up with prisoners (well, they were in regular clothes but had their hands and feet cuffed) so I decided it was time to hit the road. We picked up the medicine (well, 3 of the 5) on the way back and I was actually feeling hungry by noon the next day. Saved again by random drugs I don’t understand!

The evening was rain-free so we rescheduled the night hike and Kendi, Jeff, Aunt Trudi, Uncle Don and I headed out just after 7pm. The hike started on a road and then went on a trail and eventually led to randomly hiking over (sometimes more like through) creeks, up rocky hills through tall grass, and along the cement edges of a watercress plantation (which was like walking along a balance beam with a hill on one side and some poor person’s watercress on the other for you to fall into if you fell off).

When we got to creeks the guide, Mario would stand in the water in his rubber boots and help the rest of us to try and keep our balance on the few rocks sticking out of the water. This meant that the first of us had to across and then lead the way so that there was space for the others to come across. That person was me. There were a great many times when I could not find the trail we were supposed to be following, even when the told me to cross and then head left I couldn’t figure out where left. I’m pretty sure that if I could have seen better where I was walking I wouldn’t have continued through some of it.

We had been warned that we would have to tell him when to turn around or he would hike on forever. So, after an hour and a half we decided to go back. He said we’d have to take the same trail back and we thought 3 hours was good. But as it turned out we took a different and much easier trail back.

As we walked along he would shine his spot light in the trees and stop to look closer for things. Kendra was quite good at finding stuff as well. We saw lots of frogs and toads, giant frog eating spiders (one was awfully close to my hand when I set it down on a rock to help me cross a creek) two snakes, a scorpion, various other bugs, and this amazing spider that had these shiny dark red eggs on it’s back. By the car he also spotted a sloth in a tree. It looked like a blob of gray. I like walking in the forest at night, it was very peaceful, though still full of so many sounds and so much life. It was a great way to end our time in El Valle. The next morning we loaded ourselves down with produce from the market and headed to the beach.

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