El Trapiche Tour, and Trying Times with a Toddler

---

On this day, we decided _not_ to hike. It was Wednesday, mid-way through our trip. It was one of the most trying days we had with Kai, and Alli had a fever to boot.

So in the morning we went on the "El Trapiche" tour, which is a family-owned farm that makes sugar and coffee and fruits. The farm tour takes you to their tilapia pond, through the banana and plaintain fields, pass pineapple, to the coffee barn. An oxcart takes you (or not, if you have babies in a backpack) from the coffee barn to the "Trapiche" where the sugar products are made. You got to see the oxen grind the cane so that the juices run out, and the more modern machine that does it now. We had the chance to make our own candy, which was delicious. Kai was trying to get out of the backpack and screaming and being crazy. If we put him down, he'd run off into the farm in the opposite direction. if we tried to hold him, he would hit us. He just didn't want to be on the tour. Understandable. I had mistakenly thought he might fall asleep in the backpack but no. he did like the oxen and the tilapia. At the end of the tour, we had some delicious arracache in tortillas, a lemonade made with cane syrup, and coffee. I would recommend this tour but not with a small child. It might be interesting however to a slightly older child.

In the afternoon, we visited the Ranario (Frog Pond). I was so looking forward to doing this as I envisioned it as a toddler-friendly activity. It was indeed enclosed so I could put him down, but we had a tour so I had to wrangle him into staying in one place. The tour was quite necessary as the frogs would have been impossible to see otherwise. It was expensive and we bought a combined ticket for the Mariposario - but it turned out that it was a different, lamer, butterfly garden than the original one. In the end, we never went to either butterfly garden.

Dinner was at Morphos, a restaurant themed and covered with paintings of said blue butterfly. The food was good - my cocktail was quite necessary - and Kai was mainly contained as the owner himself told Kai not to cross "the line" (to go outside) - which gave me a technique to use with him the rest of the week.

At the end of the day, I was searching my brain on how I could be doing things differently, why I am struggling so much with my toddler, to chase him around all day quite literally and have to fight with him if we need him to be still for a moment. It is rewarding however when he is excited and says things like "moo moo" at cows and tries a new food like arracache.

---