Butterflies and Bugs

You might have thought the coffee tour took the whole day--after all, it was a whole days worth of goodness.  Believe it or not, even MORE great things were to happen on that magical day.  Once we got back to town, we stopped at Taco Taco for a great lunch.

Then we headed to the butterfly garden.  While it had a humble exterior, the exhibits were great and our guide from the eastern most part of Russia was fantastic.  She did a stand up comedy routine about bugs that cracked us up and used English in the most wonderful way.  She often used the word "casually" instead of "accidentally" or "unfortunately" as in, "and then the female tarantula casually eats her mate".  She loved bugs and her enthusiasm was infectious.

I "casually" took this abstract photo of her

We saw walking stick bugs and this bug that looks like moss:

We saw the owl butterfly and the national butterfly of Costa Rica, the Blue Morphos:

Please enjoy these pictures.  Without a guide to hold animals down, I photograph them like I do kids and bikes.

And of course, who could forget the Hercules Beetle, the strongest animal on the planet? 

This bad boy can carry a watermelon with that schnoz

We ended up referencing what we learned on this tour all over the parks of Costa Rica. 

As if all this wasn't enough, Sam managed to find ice cream on our way back to the hostel.

Sam pausing to really taste the flavors

And I found my favorite sign of the trip so far.