Day 9 – The Sun is Shining

I woke up early this morning only to find Thomas had gotten up even earlier and was out walking the grounds. He went and visited all the enclosures to see the animals. I ended up heading out myself to see if I could find him and told the others I would be back shortly and we could all head to breakfast.

I headed to the aviary and not long after walking through the enclosure heard LT in the distance. We chatted for a bit and he decided to head back to the room. I stayed in the aviary as they were feeding all the birds and sloths. The birds were singing and the songs they sang you could hear around the entire property. They were very active and happy to see the caretakers coming with fresh fruits and corn. They have a sloth cage, with three sloths in the aviary and one of the sloths was on the move. I stayed and video his movement for a better part of 15 minutes and then continued taking photographs of the birds.

Ashley texted me and told me that Anna and he were at the restaurant. I headed up shortly thereafter. We all met and hammered down so well need nourishment. While Anna and Olivia finished their breakfast, Ashley and I took off and headed down the mountain on the bikes to get a ride in. We headed straight down 7.5 miles. The bad news was we were going to have to come back up those 7.5 miles. We were down in less than 30 minutes, but it took me well over 2.5 hours to get back up. Ashley screamed up the hill as usual and upon finishing, he got in the van and tried to come to pick me up on the way up. He found me about half a mile from the resort, but I waved him away. It was a brutal climb.

While Ashley and I were out on the bikes, Anna, Olivia, and Thomas walked the Fern Trail. Thomas found a tarantula out on the trail. They all said it was the prettiest trail they had been on – period. Anna equated the trail to a Jurassic park experience. Definitely going to walk it one more time before we leave.

A shower and some liquids and we all headed down to the trout pond a little before noon. Thomas ended up catching two beautiful trout for dinner. Back to the room, we went to change into our bathing suits and we walked down to Verdes Spa at the pools. They had two pools – one cold and one hot, along with a Jacuzzi. Before heading to the pool we stopped at the gift shop and grabbed a bunch of Coronas and Imperials to make sure we would have some drinks by the pool. Needless to say, I didn’t think the quantity thing through, because we tore through those beers somewhat quickly. No worries, we called the reception and order another round. We hung down at the pool for a few hours.

Now that the leg muscles were soothed and our bodies were wrinkled, we came back to the room for just a bit, changed, and then headed out to some of the enclosures. We figured we would take in the sights one more time before dinner. We ran into a couple on the walk from Chicago – Torri and Jon-Carlo. They had just gotten married four days ago and decided to hang with us as we ventured around. We mainly spent the time at the Monkey cages, cat enclosures, and the frog building.

Thomas went back to the butterfly garden and grabbed some dead butterflies to feed the capuchin monkeys. They all clamored for one through the grates. Let me just say, these bad boys have a real appetite for butterflies. LT ran back a few more times to get the Capuchins a snack.

It was dark now and we headed to the cat cages, before finally going into the frog building where we pointed out some of the frogs to Torri and Jon-Carlo. We spent about 15 minutes with the frogs before having to head up to the restaurant for our dinner reservation.

LT caught two trout earlier in the day down at the trout pond. Those would be our appetizers this evening. They cooked them whole – one grilled and one fried, along with a salad for each. Leaving nothing but bones, we ordered our main meal. Ashley got a shrimp plate, Anna and Olivia got the beef tenderloin, and I got a tomato and basil soup. LT was filled with the trout.

I was so stuffed. We all got back to the room and Olivia got us the Just Go With It movie and we ended up watching it. Well – kinda – no one made it to the end of the movie.