The BEST beach I have ever been to

The Friday before we left Aviarios was the day off of the two volunteers we had made friends with, Dominique and Jeremy, so we decided to offer up the car so we could all do some exploring. Jeremy had read about a Cacao House in Bri-Bri that was off the beaten path and a different experience than the touristy places that are advertised all over the place. We hopped into the car and went off in the general direction we had heard it was in. After about 20 minutes (maybe less) of driving we found it. Completely unassuming, we found the sign on the side of the road:

The girl who gave us the presentation/tour could not have been more than 10 and she was amazing. Her english was great and she had a really fun sense of humor. She walked us through the process of making chocolate all the way from the tree the fruit/bean grows on all the way through the flavoring. When you first open the fruit there's a paste on the outside of the individual beans that tastes like candy. The fruit opened looks like this:

That white thing on the inside that looks like a huge worm or grub is actually segmented beans covered in the paste. You can see the lines here that show the break in-between each bean. I wish they also bottled the paste, it's amazingly sweet.

They had 12 different flavors we got to taste and then they sell the pure chocolate for a small amount, I can't remember how much it was now but we bought a few pieces...vanilla and cinnamon I think.

After the chocolate tour and a small lesson about the indigenous people of Bri Bri, we headed into Puerto Viejo to run some errands. We were there for about an hour before we continued on the road through town to Punta Uva. This is only a short distance from Puerto Viejo but the conditions of the roads makes it that you have to drive so slow it took us about 30 minutes to get there. The reason that we wanted to go to Punta Uva was that Dominique had said there was a beach there that was really nice. REALLY NICE?! "Really nice" does not even come CLOSE. We pull down a long dirt road that is littered with potholes and is a bit dark due to the canopy of trees. We park the car, get out and see this to our right:

and this to our left:

I mean REALLY! It was amazing and there were probably a total of 10 other people on the beach with us. The weather was hot, the sun was out on and off and the water...the water was perfect and shallow for a long time. Very salty and shallow it was a lot of fun to get in the water and cool off.

Once we left the beach we went to a really cute place for lunch and had some amazing ceviche.

That night when we got back to the hotel the rain was coming in and we lost power for about an hour or so which was fun. We hung out with the owner Judy for a few minutes and she gave us candles for our room. We played games on the netbook until the power came back and finished up the night.

NOW - The next day, saturday, was the day of our check out. We went upstairs and had breakfast while there was a tour from a cruise going on with the sloths. About 30min later Judy, the owner, came over and gave mel a very special gift. She handed Mel Queen Buttercup!!! She just gave her to mel and said "i have to go do a few things, are you ok? don't move"

Supporting Buttercup and a hand hold turned into....

a full on hug, which then progressed into....
A full on cuddle session.

I seriously may have never seen mel so happy as she was with this animal in her arms. I know this is something she has wanted to do for a long time (visit with sloths) and getting to hug one was the icing on the cake. We thought she would get to hug one of the babies and that would be it but it was truly a treat when she got to hold Buttercup (the first sloth to come to the sanctuary and mel's favorite of them all). She got to experience that for almost 40 minutes which was amazing. She at one point sat down and I got a chance to interact with her too when she reached out for me:

I also got a chance, unfortunately I don't have pictures of it, to hold hands with my favorite of the group that was up on the deck with the rest of the babies. Her name is Leila and she reached through the bars and grabbed my thumb. Now, a lesson to those who are new to the sloth hand holding game: 1) they love thumbs, 2) they have a MUCH stronger grip than you think they would.

All in all it as an amazing trip and I can't wait to go back to visit them again. You can volunteer at the sanctuary which I think is what we will do next. After getting to spend some one on one time with the sloths we said our goodbyes and headed up to San Jose. We stayed one night close to the airport to make the travel day a bit easier. Took a flight this morning to Florida, at the hotel now, so that tomorrow we can get up and take a shuttle over the cruise.

Next stop....Europe!