A Mom with Nails: And finally: the beach

After an active first half of the week, we ended our vacation with a relaxing 4 nights in Tamarindo on the Pacific Coast.

We had our own bungalow right off of the pool area....

...and the beach was totally gorgeous.

On top of that, we had another huge surprise at the hotel. Capitan Suizo is very animal friendly, and they take in orphan animals and raise them until they can go back into the wild, or just allow them to roam and enjoy the grounds:

Our little friend "Tiger" that visited at night for cheese crackers.....

. ....and one of many iguanas sunning by the pool: we named this one "Mohawk".

But the very best part were the orphan babies:

They have taken in three howler monkeys that were orphaned in the wild for various reasons; they have full-time staff that raises them from bottle feeding to around 2 years old. During those two years they visit with the wild families of howlers that live in the canopy and come through the hotel area on a regular basis; 1 hours visit become 2, then longer and longer until the monkey they raised stays with it's new family up in the canopy and doesn't come down again. And yes, she said it was terribly hard to see one go! The three howlers above were very young: the youngest Luka was three months, and he fell asleep in her arms while sucking his fingers. Yes, we all melted.

This white face monkey was older at about 15 months, and he was a mess! Meet JoJo:

JoJo would climb on your shoulder (and jump on unsuspecting people walking by, really funny!), steal your phone or anything else you left lying around, sneak off to the bar for a drink or a piece of fruit....

....and generally was happy to have an arm offered to climb on and hang out with you. JoJo was a people monkey!

Every morning we'd wake and say "What should we do today?" and Carter would answer: "Let's go play with the monkeys." Needless to say, it was an amazing treat!