Where IS he?  It’s 3 am in the morning and Leanne wakes up to no Kyle in a dark room.  He wouldn’t go out in this storm in the middle of woods in the middle of the night, would he? When Kyle wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t back to sleep, he normally lies in bed reading on his phone until he gets sleepy again.  Yet, it’s 3 am and he’s nowhere to be found. 

Leanne is dozing back asleep when she is startled by a loud shrieking screech. “ACCCCKKKKK!!!!!!” An Earth-shattering scream emerges from the bathroom.  “Get off me!!! Get off of me!!!! Ack!!!” There is screaming and banging and the bathroom door explodes open and Kyle comes flying through it.  

“Ack!!! Where’s my shoe? I need to kill it,” insists a shaken Kyle. He frantically runs around the room until he located his sneaker and returns to the bathroom looking like a war-torn solider going back into a warzone.  A crazy-loud banging and smashing ensues for the next minute. Baaaaaaaam.  Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. And one more for good measure BAM!   

“What the hell?” Leanne is thinking.   

Kyle tells Leanne that je was sitting on the toilet researching her mom’s cancer when he felt an unidentified creature on his left forearm.  The bathroom was pitch black so Kyle frantically smacks at his arm jumping around in the dark. He fumbles and snaps the light on. Leanne, in somewhat disbelief, figures that this is something like a spider or one of those Big Ass ants from Colombia.

As the bathroom is bathed in light, Kyle sees a 4-inch black scorpion on the floor string angrily at him. This is when he runs out and gets the sneaker and smashed the scorpion.  Although dead, the scorpion is sitting on the floor totally intact looking like it is in attack mode.

Leanne is now even more incredulous. Kyle grabs her to come and see. “Yuck!” Leanne exclaims backing away from the door.  Kyle grabs his smartphone to photo document his new friend, the late scorpion or what’s left of him. 

Neither of us can get anymore shuteye now.  Kyle is up researching deadly scorpions in Monteverde Cloud Forest. Two hours later, Leanne doses back into a deep sleep when she is startled awake by a loud banging sound. There, across the room on the floor Kyle is on his knees slamming his sneaker onto the floor. This pretty much fits the definition of Déjà vu as Kyle doing the same thing two hours ago.

“There was a tarantula on the floor trying to climb on my foot,” Kyle wails out. “That’s it!  We’re getting the hell out of this place before we both die,” Kyle yells.  Leanne looks at the remnant pieces of the spider and says, “are you sure it was a tarantula?” “Well, it might have been a baby tarantula, but it was definitely a tarantula,” he says. 

“What was the TripAdvisor rating on this hotel again?” asks Leanne.  “Higher than it’s going to be after I get through with them on my review,” Kyle retorts sarcastically.  

It’s 5:30am and we’ve already enough drama for an entire month. Another entry on the “You just can’t make this stuff up.” We also agree not to tell the kids until we are on a plane out of Costa Rica. 

In the morning, the kids have invited us over for breakfast they made which was a scrumptious meal of eggs, bacon, juice and cereal.  It was awesome and we totally appreciate the kid’s effort.

Costa Rica is an adventurer’s paradise but Kyle is trying to balance the different needs of the group in planning the days and declares today is “Leanne’s choice” day. So we visit a local coffee, chocolate and sugarcane plantation to learn how all are made. La Traipico is snuggled in this idyllic valley with lush hills, tall foliage and a laid back vibe. 

Our tour was fantastic, truly focused on teaching us about coffee, cacao and sugarcane, not looking at us as just another tour group to deal with. We were able to help pick the red coffee berries that will be used to make Costa Rican coffee.  The teens are now at the front asking their own questions and getting involved in the demonstrations.  Warms the heart that they want to learn. The tour takes a couple of hours and we arrive back at our reserve. Since the afternoon calls for rain, we decide to stay at the hotel we have dubbed the Scorpion Hotel of Horrors. The new name will protect the hotel’s identity.  Oh wait, we disclosed in yesterday’s blog that it was Los Pinos.  Note to audience: don’t stay there.

To avoid mass clan panic, Leanne and Kyle don’t want to tell the kids of our extra roommate YET (we will tell them on our way to Belize!) but they start to scratch their heads and wonder when we want to spend the entire afternoon at their cabin.  Breakfast went so well, the teens are uber excited to now make dinner so they walk into town to get the food and ingredients.  Justin and Leanne visit the hotel’s hydroponics farm to purchase salad items.  We take a nice stroll through the property’s trails to a dreamlike end at a rainbow.  

Kyle and Leanne return to their cabin to find an odd scene.  The cabin is one big room that has the bedroom on one side and the kitchen and sitting area on the other.  The bedroom side is clean and immaculate, new sheets and all.  The other side is untouched with the trash can still full of trash, the floor upswept.  Kyle checks the bathroom to make sure they have removed our new friend.  Nope, Sam is still sitting on the floor staring up accusingly.  So apparently, the cleaning woman cleaned the bedroom side, went to clean the bathroom and saw the scorpion and fled for her life leaving the kitchen side untouched. 

Leanne’s brother John and his wife Marilyn called and it’s always nice to connect with the folks we love back home.  We are far away and even though we all have each other, it does get a bit lonely at times. Our trip antics cracked them up - especially Kyle re-enactment of his 3 am scorpion encounter.  If you haven’t noticed from the blogs, we really both like to make people laugh.  In fact we write this blog trying to be comical. Maybe you didn’t notice? 

The teen-made dinner was amazing.  Justin’s stellar chicken quesadillas, Corey’s gnocchi and Ashlynn’s Oreo and chocolate dipped truffles. Who needs restaurants with this crew?  The kids have set the bar pretty high and we tell them we expect them to cook dinner for us at least 2-3 times a week going forward.

John and Ashly watch the Amine Oscars and Kyle, Corey and Justin take in the NBA All-Star game.  Although its broadcast is in Spanish, the commentary is not all that critical to following the game.