Week 9 - Costa Rica

This week sees me up bright and early to go for a walk up to Bolita. I was up at 5am, hoping to catch out any bugs that hadn’t hidden themselves away for the day. Unfortunately I didn’t catch any bugs, but I did catch a Green and Black Poison arrow frog to photograph, and had a beautiful walk through the rainforest.

A branch of the Rio Tigre that I had to cross

Rainforest trails

At the end of this week we are headed to Orlando, and while we are gone Steve will be looking after our animals. Steve is an old hand at animal husbandry, so he was fine with all the bugs we had for him to feed and water.

On Thursday we finally get to meet Armelle, Tristan’s girlfriend. She has been living and working in her native France for the past 6 months, and was nice to find out that she wasn’t a figment of Tristan’s imagination!

Friday marks the end of the first half of the shoot! As we will be away for a few days in Orlando, and out of the studio for more than a week, we removed all the plants and clear out the studio. We went out to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant in Puerto Jimenez to celebrate.

Early Saturday morning we fly out of Puerto Jimenez via Sansa Regional light planes and arrive in San Jose 50 minutes later (so much better than a 7 hour drive!!) From San Jose we fly to Orlando, and arrive early evening to pick up our hire car and drive to our hotel. We are staying in Downtown Disney, and the girls are very excited (I admit, I am too!) as we will be visiting the Magic Kingdom at Disney World! We are staying in Orlando for 3 nights to renew our Costa Rican visa, before heading back to Puerto Jimenez for a week of bug collecting before the next half of the shoot begins.

All strapped in

The mountains of Costa Rica

At the Orlando airport, we pick up our tickets to the Magic Kingdom, and Tayen and Saige are crazy with excitement over all the Disney themed shops and photo opportunities. Disney princess merchandise is everywhere. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all….!

At the Orlando airport

Sunday we get up bright and early again ready for our adventure to the Magic Kingdom. At breakfast we meet Pluto the dog, who comes over to meet Tayen and Saige. Tayen is very shy and doesn’t want to get to close to Pluto, but Saige gets a cuddle! This is just a taste of things to come….

We decided that since we were spending so much money getting into the Magic Kingdom for a day, we were going to stay for the entire day. So we spend 12 hours going on rides, meeting Disney characters, dancing in the streets and walking through the various lands within Magic Kingdom. It is a magical experience, and I enjoyed it just as much (if not more!) than the kids did! The look on Tayen’s face when she first spotted Cinderella’s castle from the monorail was priceless!

We're here!

Cinderella's castle

Thank goodness I had done a bit of research before we arrived, and hired a stroller for our stay in Orlando. Disney World has strollers for hire but they are hard plastic and don’t recline. So we were all sorted, and away we went.

Our first stop was Fantasyland, and we had to walk the castle to get there. In Fantasy land we visited Snow White’s Scary Adventures (Alan’s choice because it was the first thing we saw and there were no queues!) Not the best thing for toddlers, I have to say! The girls were both terrified of the 3 minute ride!

Then it was on to the carousel – a nice friendly ride to calm the girls!

Flying over Fantasyland

The carousel

Saige is loving the Dumbo ride

We then headed to Adventureland where we went on the Jungle Cruise (another one that wasn’t too popular with the kids, but that Alan and I loved) and then on to the Magic Carpets of Aladdin.

Some pretty realistic Hippos

On the Jungle Cruise 

On a magic carpet ride!

There were a few characters I wanted…I mean the girls wanted to meet! The first up was Ariel and Eric from The Little Mermaid, who I thought Tayen would be in raptures over. However, it turns out that Tayen was overly shy, and didn’t really want to get close to or have a photo taken with her favourite Disney princess. Then it was on to Tinkerbell and her friend Terrance, Buzz Lightyear, Woody and Jessie from Toy Story (where Saige was excited because Jessie had touched her nose!), and of course the Disney princesses Cinderella, Belle and Sleeping Beauty. Tayen got the hang of it all pretty quickly after seeing Ariel, so decided to join in the fun!

Ariel and Eric

Tink

To infinity and beyond!

"Jessie touched my nose!"

Saige telling me all about it

With Cinderella

Belle from Beauty and the Beast

Aurora from Sleeping Beauty

We went to the ‘Dream Along with Mickey Show’ which was an open air theatre performance, and also the ‘Move it shake it celebrate it – street party’ where there was singing and dancing (a lot of it by me) and where Saige was pulled from the crowd to dance with Donald Duck, only to get scared and come running back to us! I brought her back to a disheartened Donald Duck, who kissed Saige’s hand. Saige said “He put my hand in his mouth!”

So excited!

Saige strutting her stuff in her new hat

Street Party!

Saige walks away from a disheartened Donald Duck

Then there were more rides to go on, and things to see. We went on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and Monster’s Inc. Laugh floor (a very funny interactive digital show) in Tomorrowland, and the Mad Tea Party tea cups and the Adventures on Winnie the Pooh in Fantasyland. The only adult ride Alan and I got Fast Passes for (where you can skip the queues to come back at a later time) was Splash Mountain, but when we returned at our allocated time, the ride had broken down. We were able to go back later when the ride had been fixed, but by then there was even a queue in the Fast Pass lane, so we gave it a miss.

Tomorrowland

The 'must have' photo!

In between all this, we fit in lunch, and were continually walking from one land to another and back again. We were disappointed that the street parade was cancelled due to inclement weather (a few drops of rain and some lightning, boo hoo!) but apart from that we had an amazing day. It end in spectacular Disney fashion with ‘The Magic, The  Memories and You’ photo, light and music show projected onto the Cinderella Castle, and with the ‘Wishes nighttime spectacular’ complete with fireworks. It was just magical, and the whole day the girls were so excited about everything (apart from when they were dozing in the stroller!)

Fireworks at the castle

Night lights, and the kids are still awake!

On the downside, we couldn’t believe how many people were there and how much money is made and spent in one day alone in the world of Disney. In light of how many people are in need around the world, it was a little sickening seeing so much money spent on entertainment. Hypocritical of me I know since I was contributing to it all, but it certainly did hit us.