We were more interested in just going to the beach. We had reports it was very lovely.
Getting into the park was frustrating because there are a bunch of locals who have taken over the side of the road, dressed up to look like official park rangers and then try to scam you into paying for parking, a tour, and tickets to the park. After not being able to find any other parking we ended up just paying some guy who wasn't being too annoying.
After paying the legit park rangers to get into the park, we walked about 30 minutes through the jungle to the beach.
On our way to the beach we saw some deer, an amazing huge bright blue butterfly, and a sloth in a tree, along with other plants. But let's be honest plants aren't that exciting, but the sloth was.
The beach experience today was not as enjoyable as we had been anticipating. The beach itself was beautiful and not very crowded, which has the makings of a wonderful day, except for one small problem. Since we were in a national park we had the problem of wildlife, mainly overly aggressive raccoons, that weren't scared of us at all. So someone had to be on guard at all times. At one point I was laying on the mat and Joseph was in the chair and we had admittedly let our guard down, when one of the raccoons walked right up to the mat and grabbed one of our bags. I almost surrendered the bag until I remembered it had our camera, Joseph's phone and Joseph's kindle in it (I had removed my belongings from this bag but had left Joseph's to fend for themselves), so we had to run after the raccoon throwing sticks at it and hitting it until it finally dropped the bag and ran off. It was unbelievable. After that we were really careful, but we still had to be ready to scare them off every 5-10 minutes, which just made the whole morning less than relaxing. We spent the rest of the morning watching for the raccoons and watching them get into other peoples things who weren't paying attention. I think there were only 3 adults and 2 babies but they just stalked up and down the beach all day, and usually they would split up and so it felt like a lot f raccoons. I am obviously slightly scarred from the experience.
Plus since someone always had to be on raccoon watch, only one of us could go swimming at a time which is pretty lame.
We called the day a little early since we just weren't feeling it, which worked out in our favor, since it started raining shortly thereafter and that would have just been too much.
We headed back towards our town. But first we drove around from 30 minutes trying to find the church so that we could go on Sunday, but apparently it is either hidden or it doesn't actually exist because we couldn't find it. Although, in a funny little coincidence, the address and directions that you get from Mormon.org do lead you straight to the Kingdom Hall of JW's. So there's that option.
On the way back, we tried to find an ATM without a line of 10 people but failed at that as well, so we cruised on to Parrita. When we got to Parrita we had to go to the ATM and that one had a line too, which is crazy. I have never seen a line for an ATM before. Joseph waited in line. I sat in the car with the AC and listened to Spanish radio.
After showering and getting dressed we headed back to town to try and find a Restuarant that was showing American football, or had the capacity to show American football. That didn't work out either, although that didn't stop Joseph from scrolling through everyone's channels.
So to make up for not getting to watch football we went back to our favorite place, Soda El Tucan, which was delicious and the lady there totally thought we could speak Spanish which is fun.
Today was an adventure that's for sure.
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