I am still laughing at myself, 24 hours after it happened. We were on the way back from Dr. Piloto’s office. I had trouble getting into the taxi van because the first step is quite high, and the van was parked at an angle that made it even higher. My walking sticks signal to most people that I am not terribly agile right now. There were other people in the taxi, and when the driver pulled away. I thought he was leaving. But instead, he reparked the van to make it easier for me to get in and offered me the shotgun seat. I was grateful, but when I tried to tell him my knee required surgery, I misspelled surgery in my translation app and told him that “My knee requires sugar (azucar).” I KNOW the word azucar but said it anyway. He was such a kind man that he did not burst out laughing, which he was certainly entitled to do! He seemed to get it, but I’ve been breaking out in little burst of laughter ever since.

Today we took an estuary tour by boat through the mangrove swamps. We had to leave before our hotel served breakfast, so we walked into town. Most restaurants were closed, but we found a breakfast place and had fruit, avocado toast, yogurt, and coffee. Perfect.

The estuary tour was via a small boat with a canopy, powered by an outboard motor. The guide pointed out several different varieties of mangroves ( I had no idea), and my favorite was the “gentleman mangrove.” Our guide didn’t really know why it was called that.

It was very low tide, and the boat got hung up on sandbars several times. This did not worry the men in charge of the boat; they always got us safely sailing again. At the beginning of our tour, the mangrove roots were high out of the water, and they looked like fingers reaching for the tide. By the time we returned, they were underwater again.

We saw a good variety of birds. They don’t have toucans, or macaws (none of which I have seen yet), but we did see:

We didn’t get photos of most of them because they were too far away, but we also saw:

Green-backed heron

Little blue heron, adult and juvenile

Common black hawk

Great blue heron

Whimbrels

Willets ( migratory birds that look identical to the ones on our beach at Aptos, CA)

Sandpipers (also migratory)

Kingfishers

Mangrove hummingbird

Black-throat trogon (maybe)

About midway along, they served us fresh-cut pineapple, which was refreshing. I guess someone threw extra pineapple onto the beach, because on the way back, there was a very happy and very large iguana chowing down on it.

We also saw several baby crocodiles in the water. None of them more more than two years old. Sadly, none of the croc videos wants to load.

The guides anchored the boat next to a muddy bank with mangrove roots sticking out of it and invited us to climb up so we could go see howler monkeys. I and my bum knee and torn rotator cuff opted to stay in the boat, much to their surprise, but I was happy with my decision.

At one point, there were howler monkeys in the trees right next to the water, so I got to see them anyway. One of the other boats had a guide who could imitate the howler call and got a rather lackadaisical response from the male troupe leader. You know, it was hot.