Climbing the Mountain

Today we went back to a travel site that we visited before. We went to Parque Arvi in Santa Elena. That's the trip up the mountain by the metro-cable (like the ski tesort lift in an 8 person car). We returned to this place because we had bought a package of fun activities but didn't get to use them because of bad weather. Today was gorgeous!
In the high 70s at the park, in the 80s in the city. We left home at around 9:15 and got to the park at almost 11:00 am. We had tickets for the activities already so we only paid for entrance to the park (about $1.75 U.S Dollars). We first went to an enclosed butterfly area. We got to see native butterflies from the region, eggs and caterpillars. Alex took some beautiful pictures. Sucena showed great interest in what the guide was explaining. Then it was on to the boats. Three of the girls got to row on small boats. They had a great time (good practice for Crab Lake). We then had lunch at the restaurant, which has a beautiful view of the park. It's a gourmet restaurant with an Applebees price tag. The girls shared 'tipicos'--this is a plate with rice, beans, an egg on top of the rice, fried yellow plantains, ground meat, chicharron (thick cut of leaner bacon),chorizo sausage and a small arepa (Heart attack on a plate). It's funny how we are eating all these fatty things and still are losing weight. For the final activity, Alex and some of the girls did a 'Zip Line'. We are not able to attach videos on to this blog with this computer, sorry, but Alex went down first. The instructions were given to Alex in Spanish and he did not understand he had a break, (the guy used the word 'freeze' instead of 'break'--freno), so he slammed against the mattress or foam pad. He figured that's why they told him not to wear his sunglasses. The girls were itching to go on the zip line, the age limit was 10, so three of our girls could go on. The first to do the Zip Line was Mirellen, not surprisingly she is our future athlete. Then Milena went on the Zip Line. Yesica could not decide whether she wanted to go or not. I told her I didn't recommend that for her but it was her decision so she had to decide. She went, but slammed kind of hard against the foam. She was fine. By the time the Zip Line was done it was time to go, so we ended up not going to the insect area (bummer!), but it takes a long time to go from the park back to the city (Metrocable twice--train-taxi and Vicky's car before we could get home).. The cost for transportation (round trip), plus a package of four activities (Butterflies, Boats, Zip Line, Insect Farm) and entrance to the park is 12.50 per person. Our meal at the gourmet restaurant was 50 dollars for 7 people. The snacks we bought on our way to the park were 25 to 50 cents.. Snacks included, homemade potato chips and plaintain chips, sweet roasted peanuts, lemonade-homemade, freshly cut mangoes with lime juice and salt. Delicious... the most expensive thing was a big bottle of water which was 2,000 pesos (about a dollar)... MEDELLIN, we will miss you! It felt we were back to Bay Beach in Green Bay, except a lot warmer... Enjoy some our shots from today.. When we got back our bedroom door was locked and we could not get in, so we had to call the manager to let us back into our bedroom. In the meantime the two older girls and Mercedes went and got stuffed animals for the girls. We had already selected bookmarks with poems for each girl. We met individually with them before going to sleep and gave them their poem and a new stuffed animal as an 'adoption' gift for yesterday. They were all very happy. Tomorrow we finish our paperwork here and start packing (Yikes!). Time is flying by..