Africa Mia, a.k.a. Coolest Zoo Ever! by Jodi

Yesterday, the kids didn’t have school...surprise, surprise. Sadie had hurt her finger pretty bad earlier in the week. We went to a new beach called Playa Junquillal for Family Night on Monday. It was amazing. We saw manta rays jumping out of the water--I’m assuming they were catching food. And we saw baby sea turtles in a hatchery they have on the beach. You’re supposed to pay for a tour, which we’ll do another time. But, we got a sneak peak this time since they can’t really hide them while they’re digging them out of the sand to take to the tour.

Anyhow, Sadie decided for the first time in months that she wanted to surf. But, she wouldn’t go very deep. The waves here were pretty strong, but I figured she’d be o.k., just catching the end of the white water. Wrong. The white water came more forcefully than I was expecting and she wasn’t balanced well laying on the board yet and tipped over the side and landed on her hand weird, bending her pinky all the way backwards. So, she was done and Jack and I had to hurry and catch as many last waves as we could while Kevin packed up.

The next day, her finger was pretty swollen and blue. I took her to a clinic here and the doctor informed me that the closest x-ray machine is in Liberia, an hour and a half away. He made a brace for her out of tongue depressors and ace bandage and sent me home with an anti-inflammatory and instructions to ice it. The next day it still looked pretty gnarly, so we decided we’d better get it x-rayed. Actually, Kevin decided that. I personally think that a broken finger is the same as a broken toe. It might hurt a lot, but it’s not like they’re going to cast it. So, unless it’s displaced and obviously needs to be set,  just brace it yourself and wait for the pain to go away. But, since the kids had the next day off and Kevin was pretty worried about it, we headed off to Liberia Thursday morning.

We got to the hospital around 11 and were immediately taken in to get it x-rayed. It cost $40 and took about 10 minutes to do the whole thing. They said to come back in an hour and the technician would have a report written up regarding the results of the x-ray. So, we went and hit a new store I discovered with Dianais the week before when we’d been in Liberia for the adult session of our district conference. This store was the first store I’d found in Costa Rica where the prices actually compared if not beat the prices in the U.S. at all the cheap stores I frequented. So, the kids were excited to go check it out and we stocked up on some more school supplies and stuff to organize our house.

We went back to the hospital and the report stated that the finger was broken and they recommended seeing an orthopedic doctor. It was about 1 p.m. at this point and the first ortho appointment available wasn’t until 5:40. We booked it and called Kevin to tell him we wouldn’t be back with the car in time for him to go to Young Men’s that night. We’d wanted to go check out this zoo in Liberia that Kevin’s uncle, Heinee, had told us was really awesome. But, we needed to have the car back by 5 for Kevin, so we didn’t think we’d have time. Since we ended up having to stay, it was a perfect excuse to go check out this zoo.

Now, I honestly didn’t know anything about this zoo except that Heinee said it was really cool and they actually let you feed the animals. I took this to mean that maybe they’d let you feed some goats or a pig and you’d just have to chuck bread over the fence that’s closest to you as well as the secondary fence 5-10 feet behind that, because that’s how the cages are set up in the U.S. We got there and had to decide between 3 entrance fees. One was only $6 a kid and was some kind of walking tour with no explanation of what you’d really see. The second and third options were a tour on a safari bus that mentioned being able to feed the animals, which is what we went for. One was $24 a kid and the second was $55 a kid. The lady told me the only real difference was that you’re guaranteed to feed the giraffes with the more expensive one.

Now, this was a serious dilemma for me. I have a 5 year old who thanks Heavenly Father for giraffes every time she prays and was sitting on my lap with her puppy eyes begging to feed giraffes. I knew Kevin would think I was numb nut for paying so much to feed giraffes, but I couldn’t help myself. Plus, the lady offered me a 15% discount. But, then it turned out I had to pay in cash and I only had enough cash for the middle priced option, so I told everybody to pray for the giraffes to cooperate and hoped for the best.

They also offered bags of carrot sticks for $1 each, so I bought a bag for each of the kids and we boarded the safari cruiser and entered the park. The entrance totally reminded us of Jurassic Park, with these giant, cement walls surrounding the park.

The first animals we came to were the giraffes. It turned out we had nothing to worry about. They immediately came over and started eating the carrots over the fence. In fact, it turned out the walking tour was exactly the same as the overpriced tour we purchased, except that you had to walk, rather than being driven the 20 meters between each animal cage.

It was unreal and absolute heaven for my kids, though, especially that cute 5 year old. I could not believe how close these giraffes were. The idea of being able to see one up close, let alone touch one, let alone watch it’s 2 foot long purple tongue come out of it’s mouth and curl around the carrots my kids were holding was unreal.

We traveled on down the road and fed zebras, antelope, a wart hog, camels, gemsbok, emus, and watusi. The ostriches freaked me out. They would swerve their necks all over and peck at the fence like mad, trying to grab the carrots. That is one animal I think is better seen from afar.

Those are some ugly feet.

About half way through the park, I realized one bag of carrots wasn’t going to cut it, so I bought 8 more. I figured if I was dropping $130 to get into the park, what was another $8 so the kids could feed all of the animals? We actually ended up with 4 extra bags at the end of the tour, so I asked if we could stop at the giraffe pens again on the way back. This time, the guide showed us some cooler ways to feed the giraffes, like putting the carrot on your head or holding it with your mouth. That definitely made for an amazing grand finale.

After the park, we still had an hour and a half to kill, so went to the mall we’d passed on the way out, because I remembered this cool playland inside that we’d seen when we all decided to drive to freaking Liberia to see Frozen at the theater and then it turned out to be in Spanish. I didn’t realize the playland cost to get in. So, I dropped another $7 a kid for an hour in the playland. Apparently, I could leave them and go shop, but after 20 minutes of walking around the mall, I remembered that I hate shopping and I super hate malls. So, I went and bought a coke and sat at a table outside the playland and watched the kids play, since they wouldn’t let me bring my coke in the playland. Funny thing was, they didn’t control the kids coming out of the playland whatsoever, so they all kept coming out and trying to pull me off my lazy bum to come in and they kept stealing drinks of my coke.

After that, we hit the one and only McDonalds in the area for dinner and headed back to the hospital. It turned out that the x-ray technician was, in fact, wrong and Sadie’s finger wasn’t broken. The ortho sent me home with a Rx for a different anti-inflammatory and some kind of medicated lotion for her finger. So, we hit McDonald’s again on the way out for ice cream for the drive home and headed on our hour and a half drive back.