Punta Leona

The entire Grupo de Kansas group took a trip to Punta Leona this past weekend. We left for the beach around 2 pm in a private bus. On the way there we passed over Costa Rica's most contaminated river: Tárcoles River. Surprisingly the marshes and banks of the river are home to a fair amount of American Crocodiles. Apparently they enjoy living in polluted water. We were able to look at the crocodiles from the bridge that had just a short railing separating us from being safe and being lunch. 

Crocodiles

The resort we stayed in at Punta Leona beach was very nice. It was an all inclusive resort with a private beach. It was two people per a room and everyone had their own bed. 

One of the beaches. It was recommended that we don't swim in this beach because there are jellyfish (we later found out that the other beach has them, too). We still had fun walking, laying, and building sand castles in the sand. The other beach was a short walk away. 

Our first night there, a group of us signed up to go on a nature walk early the next morning. To our surprise at 6 am the next morning we found out we had actually signed up for a bird watching tour around the hotel property (part of the property is a transitional forest reserve). With a bird expert named Alex as our guide, we set out in search of some cool birds. The whole trip ended up being really neat. We saw some awesome birds including macaws, Fly Catchers, a toucan, vultures,  a humming bird, and a Pygmy Owl. 

Two macaws 

(this picture was taken looking through the lens of a telescope)

Toucan

This was a really cool bird. They don't really walk; they just hop around.

On the hotel property we also saw monkeys. Luckily they didn't steal anything from me this time... I think the stole some bananas from the hotel restaurant though. Monkey crime is obviously holding steady. 

Baby Monkey

(Check out the baby monkey on the mom's back)

Banana War

Banana Love 

In addition to monkeys and birds, there were also a lot of Coatimundis running around everywhere. Coatimundis are relatives of the raccoon. At the hotel restaurant they would try to steal food from people's places after they got up to get more food from the buffet. They must have learned that from the monkeys...

A group of coatimundis 

The morning before we left, we all wanted to swim around in the ocean one last time before we had to leave. It was a lot of fun... even though I was stung by a jellyfish. 

All of the sudden while I was swimming a felt a fiery pain in my arm. And it hurt!  I went in to flight or fight mode and started to swim away as fast as I could. Once I was far enough away from danger I looked at my arm. My forearm had a bright red marks on it. Somehow during the frenzy of me freaking out/ being in pain it was decided that someone needed to pee on my arm (that's supposedly a remedy for jellyfish stings). Being as awesome as she is, Gabrielle willing peed in a cup for me. I'm sure you can figure out what happened next... 

After a while I was exhausted from the amount of toxin that my body had been exposed to (your body releases a lot of histamines after a jellyfish sting). My arm hurt and felt weird for the rest of the day. Its better now though. I'm just really glad I started swimming away when I did. The whole event was pretty comical (minus the pain) and I'm pretty sure everyone got a good laugh out of it.