I'm In Heaven

     Do you think that in the land of milk and of honey there were also cows and bees?
There are plenty of both here.  I took Nature Air (not Sansa as previously printed) this morning on some antique airplane that looks straight out of the 50's.  We flew with 2 pilots, one man, two women who were vomiting and me.  As soon as we landed I RAN into the bathroom to wash my hands. Glad to be through with that flight.
     The drive to the lodge was 30 minutes through darling towns and beautiful countryside.  No barbed wire here. Just flowers and birds and cows lounging by the river.
The taxi driver was also my guide, pointing out great local restaurants, banks, beautiful hotels and places to go. Unfortunately, my chosen spot was neither beautiful nor a place
I wanted to go.  It looked great for back backers, but I never liked that kind of place when I was of a more appropriate age to be a back backer.  I walked into the registration desk, took one look at the Nintendo game and the girls playing checkers and turned around to get back into the taxi. 
     "Esta lugar es no para mi."  
     Where do you want to go, he said.  Someplace beautiful, I said.  Arenal Springs Resort and Spa is where he brought me.  I couldn't be more thrilled.  So much for local 
Quepos travel agents who book places regardless of the kind of traveler they have.
This is a 5 star plus hotel with grounds that look like a botanical garden, mineral pools with 90* water that will relax the stress out of anyone and more birds and animals than
I've seen in the 2.5 months I've lived down south in Quepos/Manuel Antionio.  I saw 4 toucans yesterday.  Bills larger than my hand.  Yellow hiding inside their tail feathers.
I wanted to sing, "Shake your tail feathers! Shake your tail feathers!", but didn't need to as so many people gathered to look and gawk that this fellow finally gave up on the lemon tree and flew away.  The others flew after him and I'll be looking for them today.
There are chubby yellow bellied birds that have a yellow eye mask, jet black birds with the most scarlet red markings on their backs.  There are giant lemon and orange trees and more than 100 different types of plants. 
     Today I hiked to a nature compound that had a frog section with every kind of frog found in Costa Rica.  Some are smaller than your fingernail. This guy isn't that tiny but he is still my favorite! If you look closely you will notice the blue at what would be his elbow.  Apparently, when threatened he shows his colors to warn them that he is poisonous even though he is not!  Cute and clever!  HMMMMMM. I could use a man like
that.  HAHAHAHAH
     Frogs have fascinated me since we dissected them in Biology.  Answers.google
lists 7 similarities and 7 differences between humans and frogs. Very interesting to me.
There are frogs near my apartment in Quepos that secrete a white liquid when threatened.  This is what made dog Lucy sick last week.  I'm told she could have died.
There was a frog today, quite tiny, that glowed in the dark.  There was a frog that no longer produces tadpoles, just goes straight from egg to frog, because it is reacting to the pollution in the sky and in the earth.  What does that tell you?  We as humans, with 7 similarities in common with frogs, can't remember we have evolved and that we don't have to trash the earth.  I think the frogs should all secrete a white liquid whenever humans are around. This could affect us in such a way that we stop our selfishness and think of others, great and small, for all time. What a wonder that would be!
     It began to pour down, thus my afternoon activity was cancelled.  I was to drive
then hike to the back side of the volcano to see the lava flow.  Instead, I relaxed in the mineral spring pool and had lunch sitting on a rock stool talking Australians about
Cricket.  The fog is so dense that the world has closed in around this charming hotel and people are actually sitting and talking and just enjoying each other.  
     I'm here in the open air library listening to the metal clacking of the male frog looking for a mate. When she hears the most beautiful, they will mate. They like the rain.  The red frog in the park today lays it's eggs on a leaf that is hanging over the pond or river. When it's time for the tadpoles to hatch, they just drop down into the water. 
     I like my time here, in spite of the rain. Remember that one vacation you looked so forward to?  The one you had high hopes for and once you got there the weather was
terrible?  Well I really need a few days of sunshine but somehow all this rain hasn't bothered me.  What did bother me was finding the evacuation plan here at the hotel in the event this volcano erupts again.  But I'm not too worried about that.  After 4000
years in dormancy, it erupted in 1966 and has been quiet ever since. Still.........

That's it.  This says it all. Pura Vida