In Which We are Totally Scammed in a Foreign Country

Jaco, Costa Rica

We felt like we needed a really positive Costa Rica experience to offset the cockroaches and injured fingers (I cut my own with that same stupid knife the day after Ronan had), and also something worthy of using a rather expensive car rental on before we turn it in next week and start relying on our feet and public transportation, so we decided to go to Manuel Antonio National Park, about an hour and a half south of us. As we approached the park, we were driving merrily along, following Google maps, fully expecting to still drive on for a bit longer when someone started waving us over to the side of the road. He sincerely stepped right in front of our car, and directed us into a parking area off to the side of the road. He told us this was where we should park for Manuel Antonio, he didn't exactly say it was the official parking lot, but it was definitely implied. Then before we could even get out of the car, another man was at the window, explaining the prices involved in entering the park, so much per person for the tour and so much  per person for the entrance fee. We knew the entrance fee, we were planning to walk it on our own. He insisted that a guided tour would be better. Our guide would be a trained naturalist. He would have a scope. He would know where to find the animals. Then he cut his price, offering to let two of the kids on the tour for free. He spoke some English. We speak less Spanish. He stopped mentioning the entrance fee. We didn't notice. We paid him. He said our tour would leave in a few minutes. We slathered sunscreen on our white bodies. Then a woman approached me and asked me to pay for parking. So I paid her too. We met our tour guide, George, he did indeed have a scope and was prepared to show us a sloth right then and there from the parking lot. We looked at the sloth. he pointed out some howler monkeys. Then he gave us and our new friends, Valentina and Patrick from Chile, our pre park pep talk, told them to put their cigarettes back in their car, made sure we had no forbidden foods with us AND mentioned that we all still needed to pay our park entrance fees, we had only paid for the tour. Then he led us on a relatively lengthy walk to the park entrance. Lots of people were parking up here closer to the entrance. We had definitely just been tricked. But we sort of felt like they had won some kind of game, we had been fairly duped, so we meekly went along.

It turned out that George was a genuinely nice guy. He spoke better English than anyone we have yet dealt with here, it was sincerely relaxing to communicate so easily. He even went back and forth effortlessly between English for us and Spanish for our Chilean friends. He really did find lots of animals we never, ever would have seen, like the tiny bat hanging under the fold of a giant leaf, the scarlet crabs along the side of the creek running below us, the stick bird, that really did look so much like a piece of the tree that he had to take extra time carefully pointing him out, and most of all the sloths silently clinging to trees way above our heads. That scope of his was amazing, he set it up for us at each animal sighting, let us all look through it, and then used our phones to take photos through it for us. I don't know if George really had any kind of documentation qualifying him as a certified 'naturalist,' as was advertised back in the parking lot that morning. Are there certified naturalists? But he seemed pretty knowledgeable about each species he showed us, and could answer any questions we asked. He had Fionnula distinguishing between male and female sloths before we were done and taught us how to say bat in Spanish. Murcielago. But Batman is still Batman.

So we were taken in by a minor scam maybe, but it turned out to be a pretty great day anyway and maybe because of said scam. I am pretty sure it can't be a bad day if it includes sloths.