Finally Feeling the Heat...

Kicking off the morning with a pretty nice bang; this morning while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom I heard some rustling and odd noises coming from the woods behind me so I looked around and saw none other than a family of Howler Monkeys!! I must say, that was pretty cool.  A short while later we went down to the open courtyard/dining area and what should we see in the trees above us but more monkeys! Apparently there is this one monkey in particular that really likes women and sometimes will come down and jump on your shoulder. I now have another goal for while I am here...

Apparently this one will sometimes jump on the shoulder of some unsuspecting woman.

            Luke biked over and met us around 9:00, a little later than we had originally intended but hey, the baby was actually sleeping so who were we to argue??

            The first place we went we drove out of Samara, not a huge feat to be honest, just out, a quick left turn, and then down ¼ of a mile and there is the end.  Like I said, small town! We went to the fair sized beach of Carillo (the name of both the town and the beach) a little ways out of Samara and can I tell you it was just gorgeous! Not many people around, shockingly blue-green water, and sand littered with these little spiral shaped shells. And I mean they were everywhere! Luke said he really hadn’t seen many on the beach in Samara and that the next beach over is always littered with sand dollars while we didn’t see any on this one. Apparently each little beach tends to have one specific shell it has in abundant quantities in comparison to the others.

           

            We took our time exploring and Luke, Dad and I left mom with Arden on the beach and took off with our snorkels, flippers, and one of the Hawaiian Slings.  We didn't really see much to spear but it was still super cool to swim around the reef and see some of the smaller tropical fish. Luke and I even got to see a couple turtles!

Happy baby on the beach

            The one I saw was a bit bigger than dinner plate sized but apparently Luke saw one that was gigantic! Almost the width of my outstretched arms he said! He had tried to point it out when he saw it but with the murky water and its agile speed in the opposite direction it had soon disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, rearing off the ocean floor.

            After Carillo, we drove back into Samara and found an out of the way access road that took us to the far end of Samara beach.  We then hiked around the point quite a ways to a spot where Luke has done an awful lot of fish the past couple weeks.  We did end up catching one fish, a rock fish, but Arden was getting really unhappy so we decided to call it quits a little early and head back into town.

Gettin' ready to do some fishin'!

            I started getting a pretty bad headache and it wasn’t until I got back to the car that I realized just how much sun I had gotten that day.  Despite having applied sunscreen multiple times, the sun exposure had still managed to turn my back and shoulders a lovely bright red color that gave off a little more heat than I would have liked.  Definitely not the first time I’ve gotten a sun burn and I dare say not the last.  By far not the worst either.  That one would have hands down been in Bryce Canyon, Utah where Dad and I hiked for 6 or so hours in 95 degree weather and I forgot sunscreen…. But that’s another story altogether!

            We ended the evening off with some awesome time hanging out with Anna once she got out of class and another fantastic meal cooked my culinarily savvy brother J