Base camp

Found it. 

Change of plans.  With Quinnie down for the count, I was able to move our River Raft excursion to Monday.  That left today open.  And since Aubrey, Shelby and I had already crushed zip lining yesterday, we didn't have anything to do.

So we took a yoga class.  It's offered daily here and the instructor was a Costa Rican free spirit with a thick accent.  Honestly I just stopped listening to her after a while and just kept peaking my head up from Downward Dog to see what was coming next. The girls were laughing at how much I was sweating.  All I could see was my daughters cutting corners (corte de esquina - learned that from our psycho driver yesterday who was, you guessed it, cutting corners. Literally.).  Yoga is what you make it, slackers.  That butt muscle isn't going to streatch itself.  Pigeon pose.  You kidding me?

After that I did a half hour on the elliptical before we all (not Quinn, mind you.  She was unconscious with a fever at this point) went to a nature preserve.  It was a five minute walk from the resort and similar to other "private" nature areas.  Kinda hokey.  And gimmicky.  And maybe cheap (hard to tell since we are not in the US).  But is was one of the better ones I have been to.  We passed up the guided tour and went it alone.  They had an amazing butterfly exhibit that pretty much freaked Aubrey out (she HATES butterflies), decent snake, crocodile and turtle exhibits, and a world class frog exhibit.  We saw probably 2-3 dozen species of frogs - all indigenous to Costa Rica.  It was epic.

These ants had an army that streatched for over 100 yards down a path carrying leaves from a tree.  They actually split into two paths to two different nests.

After that we grabbed another average lunch.  There is kind of a lack of food options here.  While there are three restaurants, which, between them have every American food option, the execution is lacking for the most part.

We then went and sat by the pool.  In the rain.  Well, it only rained for a second.  But we had as much rain as we had sun.  I will tell you this: when the sun shines, the temp goes up by 20 degrees.  Not lying.  But under the clouds in the nice humid air I was able to catch a nice nap after reading 3 pages of War and Peace (seriously I am reading it).  Quinn woke me up.  The Ghost of Christmas Past.  She was feeling better so came to join us in the overcast.

But her good health was short lived.  She spiraled before, during, and after dinner until she shut herself down.  Hoping she can rally for tomorrow.  We don't have any more free days here in Arenal.  All business.