We tasted the world's worst spaghetti sauce but the rest of the trip was awesome

July 25 is a national holiday in Costa Rica.  It is a celebration of the annexation of Guanacaste, one of the provinces.  Because of this we had Monday off and therefore a long weekend.  Jenee, Eric, Stacy, Simone, David, and I headed to Manuel Antonio, a national park on the Pacific Coast.

Stacy had bought our bus tickets on Friday.  We met at the bus station for our 9 AM bus and headed to the coast.  The closer we got to sea level, the hotter it got.  There isn’t much exciting from the bus ride except for the fact that I ended up sitting next to a pre-med student from Dallas. So we ended up talking about the medical school application process in Texas.  He has one interview already.  We also got to talking about my research a bit (he asked).  Neither were things that I expected to talk about on a bus in Costa Rica.

We arrived in Quepos, the town near Manuel Antonio Park, where we were actually staying.  The hostel we stayed at probably has the prettiest grounds of any hostel I have stayed at, but otherwise it was definitely not my favorite.  But that’s ok, we didn’t spend much time there.  Once we got checked in, we headed to the public beach at Manuel Antonio. 

While it was muggy and still in Quepos, the weather was perfect at the beach.  The breeze coming in off the ocean, kept things cool enough.  The water was the perfect temperature.  We took turns playing in the water and watching our stuff.  Some laid out… I, of the pasty skin, applied sunscreen religiously.  There were pretty good waves coming in so we had a great time jumping in them, getting knocked over, laughing at each other when we got a face full of sea water.  It was awesome.

Since we had skipped a real lunch, we got hungry eventually and headed back to Quepos.  One of the teachers at the Institute had recommended a pizza restaurant.  We were very sad when it was not open.  We wandered around and finally found a way to feed ourselves.  When we got back to the hostel, the rest of the group got in the pool.  I was tired of being wet, so I took a shower and dried off.  Some of the group went dancing later, I went to bed.

The dorm wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t real great either.  During the day, it was pretty uncomfortable, so Jenee, Stacy, and I decided to upgrade to a room with its own shower, and more importantly A/C.  We then headed to the National Park.

A couple other students had been to the National Park earlier in the month.  They had strongly advised us to get a guide that we would see many more animals that way.  Boy, were they right.  We were discussing whether or not to pay the extra money and this guide comes up and offers his services for half-price.  (The discussion had included the fact that we weren’t sure we’d want to pay $20 a person.)  It turns out it was the same guide the others had had, and it really was half price.  BUT it was TOTALLY worth the money.  We got to see lots of things we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

William our guide and a walking stick.

A crab

Colorful grasshopper

Red Dragonfly

Howler monkey

Sleeping baby Howler

3-toed sloth and baby

2-toed sloth and baby

Jesus Christ Lizard. The name comes from the fact it will run across water.

Africanized Bees

 

At the end of the tour, William took us to his favorite beach in the park.  We found a nice shady spot to set up camp then started heading out into the water.  It was beautiful.  The public beach was nice but the beach in the national park was nice.  It was great…  One cool thing that happened was that Jenee and Eric headed to find a geocache.  They ran into a group of monkeys.  One of them even started throwing stuff and Eric.

"Our" beach

View from where I was sitting

See I was there

 

After having another great time at the beach it was the middle of the afternoon and we had skipped lunch again.  So we headed out of the national park to find lunch.  We decided to eat at the first place that “looks decent.”  This was not a great plan.  It was one of the worst if not the worst restaurant any of us had eaten in.  If you don’t mind bad food and bad service for a high price, it was ok.  Jenee said her spaghetti sauce was the worst she had ever eaten.  We all thought it was an exaggeration…nope… it was really, really bad… unless you like stewed tomatoes with a distinct metallic taste.

So we then headed to another restaurant to try again.  While at the restaurant, I realized I was turning red.  I still had been using lots and lots of sunscreen, but I still burned.  Everyone else was heading out to the beach.  I headed back to our air conditioned room.  I had to wait an hour (or at least it seemed like it) to check into our new room.  I kept getting pitying looks from people.  I didn’t know why until I looked in the mirror.  I was pretty red. 

After everyone got back, we hung out in the air conditioned room, then went for ice cream.  Some of us hung out in the common area of the hostel and learned a card game from some Israeli newlyweds.

OH one other thing of note from Sunday, that even though I didn’t get to watch it.  Uruguay won the Copa America.  Soy celeste.

Since I was already pretty burnt, I knew I couldn’t go to the beach again really.  I found a mangrove tour to go on that was on a covered boat.  Stacy also did a tour, but she went kayaking.  On my tour there was a family from Panama.  They were really nice.  I got to see some more new things.

Mangroves

Lots of locals were out fishing on the holiday

After the tour, Stacy and I headed to the beach to meet the others.  I had given the others money to rent and umbrella and chairs at the beach.  So I hid from the sun and took a nap.  It was still really fun.  We ate lunch then headed back to Quepos to get cleaned up and ready to catch the bus.  Just after we got back to the hostel, it down poured.  We thought it would rain on us all weekend, but the weather was beautiful.  So we were really fortunate to have the rain hold off til we were ready to go.

We got home around 9 Monday night.  I took a shower and went to bed.