Cauhita snorkel!

March 15th-We were up at 6:30am as we had a snorkel and hike planned.   A 7am breakfast and 7:30 pick up.  Our cab driver drove us the 20 mins to Cauhita for Roberto's snorkel adventure.  We arrived and were quickly outfitted with flippers, mask and snorkel and then we trekked downtown to the shore to the boat.  
A rustic boat unlike the catamarans we have experienced in Hawaii! We sat down and were off to the reef.  Thank goodness for ginger root! After about 15 minutes we were at the reef and our guide was in the water in a flash.  It took Delaney a little courage but she jumped in like a pro, as did Danica. 
We were snorkelling for a while before we started to see the good coral, the brain coral and the coloured fish. But once we had our sea legs we saw quite a bit.  After about 40 minutes Delaney was done and so we headed back to the boat, just in time as he was gathering everyone.  We climbed in and headed over to a new spot and jumped back in.  There was a lot of coral here and tons of colourful fish, we saw 2 lion fish, some eels, a small stingray and lots of colourful little guys.  After another 30 or so minutes we all piled back in to the boat and headed to the little peak we could see at the head of what we found out to be Cauhita national park.  
We climbed off and enjoyed a snack of some red fruit we had no idea what it was, as well as pineapple and papaya!  2 raccoons and a white faced monkey joined us for our snack.  The Anthony showed up- he was to be our guide for the hike back.  We started on the trail, following the shoreline and before we knew it we were seeing all kinds of things we would have walked by, right off there were multiple sloths in the trees above; we must have spotted at least a dozen before the end of the hike.  Anthony pointed out a bright yellow viper hiding waiting for its prey, he said if we were bitten that we had 2 hours to get anti venom,  good to know!  We saw some more monkeys, the white faced ones though and not the howlers.  We also learnt a ton about all the plants and trees along the way. There were long lashed vipers, purple land crabs, gold fitted spiders, gorgeous blue butterflies and at the end of our 2 hour hike back to town we even saw some large iguanas!  A pretty amazing day. 
We headed back to the place we had started and were treated to a "typical" lunch, which is a meat/fish of your choice and rice and beans.  Then our ride was there and took us back to our hotel.  We spent the afternoon chilling at the pool.  Dinner was tough as we don't have too many places to choose from, but we settled on huge place that had live calypso music.  The girls had pasta and Frank and I both had lobster tacos, the were not too bad.  Then we headed to bed as we were pooped.  No rain tonight, but the monkeys still woke us at 5 am.