Things I Never Want to Forget About Costa Rica--Part 2

Paddling hard into oncoming white water rapids, glancing backwards, and our guide is calming eating watermelon.

The biggest, baddest crocodiles on Rio Tarcoles have names like Fidel Castro, Saddam Huessin, and Mike Tyson.

Vampire bats secrete a substance to stop the coagulating of blood and interfer with feeling, so they can lick the blood as much as they want. And they return to the same victim, night after night.

My skin was luxuriously soft for days after the mud baths.

Leaf cutter ants harvest leaves to take to their nest, where they grow fungus to eat.

The sun rises at 5:30 every morning, sets at 5:30 every night, year round.

On the hanging bridges tour, our guide wanted to keep us safe

and warned us to keep focused on where we were walking.

Ali said, "I didn't come all this way to look at my feet."

Impatiens are the "national weed."

They eat everything with Lizarno sauce, not spicy, but tangy.

A group from New York, stopped our guide, a biologist, to ask what that animal in the field was. He said, "What animal? I cannot see an animal there, there is a cow in the way."

Little children walk for miles alone to school, perfectly safe.

Took a close up photo of an eyelash pit viper--1 of the 5 deadliest snakes in Costa Rica.

I'm incapable of uttering the simplest Spanish phrases, in spite of 2 yrs of college level classes.

Met up with Billy, Sandra, and Cody from Truckee at a very remote resort. How do these things happen?

Coffee tastes the same whether it is fresh ground or not, it just smells better.

Shampoo ginger smells like shampoo.

The average Costa Rican makes $500/month, but food and energy are very cheap, and medical costs are covered through a very inexpensive medical plan. They pay no income tax if they make under $600/month. However sales tax is 13%.

Sloths' fur turns green from the chlorophyll in the leaves they eat. They must climb down to use the ground to defecate once a week.

There are 5 types of bats: nectar, fruit, fish, insect, and blood.

Chicken of the Tree is iguana.

The males turn bright orange during mating season.

A pig walked right through the middle of the dining room while we were having dinner.

Jesus Christ lizards are not called that because they walk on water. No, it is because when one is running towards you, you shout, "Jesus Christ!"

When someone has been dead for 5 years, they open the crypt and scoot the bones aside to add someone new.

"Nightclub" does NOT mean disco. It is a strip club and the strippers are not exotic dancers, they are prostitutes advertising their wares.

I was thrilled to see toucans, scarlet macaws,

neon blue Morpho butterflies, yellow flycatchers, green honeycreepers,

howler and capuchin monkeys and a coatimundi.

The people of the Maleku tribe were almost wiped out

and there are only approximately 700 left.

They greet each other by saying "capi, capi"

and knocking on the other person's shoulder.

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If you were on the trip, what are you're most memorable things? Share them in the comments.