A Haircut, Swimming with Monkeys, and a Flight to San Jose

This being our last day in Puntas Arenas (the Province we're in), and with Jenny busy packing for herself and the Littles, I decided to get a haircut, since we still had the rental car.

I had noticed a barbershop (the striped poles are universal, or at least, global) on an earlier run into Quepos. I admit to being slightly nervous; this was my first time driving in a Latin American country; and we all know the stereotypes we have of that. Still, my observation of the drivers was that everyone seemed pretty reasonable.

As you might have suspected from these photos, I haven't had my beard trimmed in months. I did go into a nearby barbershop at home, but ran in horror when I found myself sitting right across from a shrine to the traitor, Donald Trump. I was pretty sure I wouldn't find that here.

My barber had probably not been at the top of his English class in school, but between his limited English and my limited Spanish, we managed pretty well.

And, by golly, I was happy with the results.

Afterwards, before returning to the resort, I took a brief walk on Quepos' sea wall. Quepos is only about 15 feet above sea level; the wall protects the town from tidal surges and storms.

I returned to the resort parking lot (it's very small, as most people use the resort shuttle service to get about) and let Farrin, our favorite of the resort staff, run me to our suite in one of the golf carts dedicated to that purpose. The buildings are arranged in small clusters out of sight of each other.

When I got to our suite, I discovered the Littles were already in the pool. And they weren't alone.

This type of monkey is a mantled howler. A tropp of them must live near our cluster, because we can hear them chatting with each other at night.

The mantled howler didn't stay long. But she was quickly replaced by a whole family of white faced capuchins. First one, to be sure it was safe (I suppose), then several.

Eventurally, the kids got bored with watching their distant relatives, and got into the water themselves. The monkeys likewise ignored them, but left pretty soon.

Eventually everything was packed and ready to go. Zach and I had earlier returned the rental car; so we had the resort shuttle take us to La Managua Airport airport. The terminal was, basically, a big open garage.

Behind the terminal we spotted a deer nibbling on a hillside.

And then our plane arrived, and we were ready to head to San Jose, Costa Rica's capital and location of the country's only international airport.

Our first glimpse of San Jose: Much more developed than Quepos, to be sure!

We were picked up at the airport by the hotel shuttle. The hotel is enormous.

It's built in the Spanish patio style.

My room was very nicely appointed. I was tired enough after the day's adventures to just want to go to sleep. First, though, I had to eat. Room service!

I was taken aback by the toiletries, which had the word "sativa" on the labels. However, when I looked it up, I learned that avena sativa is, in fact, plain old oats. So these are oatmeal toiletries.

And so night fell on our last full day in Costa Rica.