Bananas, Beaches & Beer!

For our first full day in Manuel Antonio with no formal activities scheduled, a big group of us decided to explore the national park in the morning, and spend time on the beach in the afternoon. Although it is a pretty small park, we had heard that it was amazing, teaming with wildlife of all sorts. We paid the $7 for entry into the park, and decided against getting a guide because they were a bit pricey.

And teaming with wildlife it was. Most specifically, monkeys! We had already seen the three species, Howler, Spider, and the white faced Cappuchines (photo by Adam) from a distance at some of the other sites, but in Manuel they are everywhere, and definitely not afraid to come up close to tourists. In fact, one enterprising monkey even stole Neil's banana when he put it down on a bench for a second to tie his shoe! We were careful to tie our bags to branches after that when we weren't carrying them, for fear that they would take a fancy to something more valuable. We also saw more sloths, and thousands of bright red and blue crabs as we walked.


A picture of Adam taking a picture of Greg leaning on a palm tree.

We took one trail marked Punto Cathedral which ascended upward and had a view of the ocean, and then came upon a private beach where we decided to stop. Anna, Laura, Matt, Greg, Adam and I spent we have no idea how much time there, bobbing in the waves and talking about our past travels, and where else we wanted to go. We all envied Anna's job as a travel agent at that moment! It was gorgeous with the Pacific Ocean stretching out into the distance, and peace and quiet on our very own (though slightly rocky) beach.



It started to rain around 1 or 2pm as it always does during the rainy season in these parts, and we were getting hungry, so we left the beach for the hike back. We were in good spirits despite the fact that we were soaking wet and both sunscreen and bug spray had both proven completely ineffective.

At 7:00, the entire group met for our final night on the town; the next day was marked for heading back to San Jose. We went to a great restaurant called El Avion, which boats an abandoned Fairchild C-123 that was part of a crazy Iranian-Nicaraguan-American scandal in the 1980's. Again the power went out, which was beautiful since the place was full of candles. They had amazing drinks too, I had a "Pura Vida" - Vodka (I think) triple sec, and a whole bunch of different fruit juices. Quite delicious! And then we headed out for our hardest night of partying by far; first to a restaurant/pub with a live Latin band, and then to a full out disco club. Tiffany, Parveen, Laura and I were promptly grabbed by some guys who definitely knew what they were doing on the dance floor, and I discovered that I actually can dance to Latin music when I'm paired with someone who knows what they are doing (or when I'm drunk enough). 4:30am saw Tiffany and I who were both more or less completely drunk trying to drag Parveen into a taxi; she realllly didn't want to go home. We eventually got ourselves and her back to the hotel and fell into bed.


Greg, Anna, and Benno bring on the beer!