Jan 29
Left for the airport from Rodrigo and Cecelia's at 4:30 a.m. No trouble really getting on the plane or anything, flew to Lima, waited in the airport, flew to San Jose. In San Jose, a guy from the hostel (Hostel Pangea) was there to pick me up, but I ended up waiting around for a while because someone else on his list was a no-show. But that was all right, I talked to some guys who worked for a tour company with about 40 Statseans on it and saw me chase a guy down who'd left his ATM card in the machine. Eventually the person didn't show up, but a family of three did: Andrew, his partner whose name I forget and Delphina, their two-year-old. I think I wrote about them before, but to recap, they were planning on spending six months living in CR, camping out on the beach or finding a cheap apartment somewhere, just to get away. Nice people, and Delphi was really cute. Spent the night at Pangea.
Jan 30
Woke up, showered, got dressed and left for the Pacific-side bus station (the terminals are broken up in San Jose by destination, because there's really no convenient place to put one big enough for the whole country), where I bought a ticket for 2 p.m. and settled in to eat lunch and wait. That day I had a typical Tico (Costa Rican) lunch: a chicken casado, which consists of chicken, rice, salad, black beans and fried plantains, all served crowded together on one dish. Very tasty. Got on the bus, rode to Manuel Antonio to meet April and Katy. The ride was very pretty a lot of the time, but we arrived after dark and towards the end I just wanted it to be over, even though it hadn't been THAT long (about 6.5 hours). Finally ended up in the hostel, said hi hi hi and ate the dinner that Katy had made (pasta with tomato-and-mango sauce). Quick side note: I didn't really know Katy before this whole trip started, we'd met a few times and had some mutual friends but basically decided to travel together during a random conversation in the Diag in March. We got to know each other pretty much entirely through the emails planning this thing starting last May, and then of course on the traveling. I'm still kind of in shock that it all worked out so well.
Jan 31
Up with the sun to make it down to Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio (the main attraction near town) before the crowds and sun hit, and boy was that the right decision. The place is so beautiful. We set up shop on a deserted, perfect white-sand beach by ourselves, lazed around, went swimming, took pictures and when the place started to get super-crowded (i.e. there were more than ten other people in sight) we packed up and went a-walking into the jungle on some beautiful forest paths. Apart from the views, which are reputedly the best coastal ones in CR, we saw at least two different kinds of monkeys! In great quantities! Like ten feet away from us! It was really cool. We were out of the park by lunch time (it's small) and after eating we hung out in the shade for the heat of the day then went and I swam for a while at the beach that's right in the town itself. I forget what we did for dinner that night. Here are some pics of Manuel Antonio:
Feb 1
Spent all day traveling from the Pacific to the Caribbean by bus. Long, long day but could have been a lot worse. The buses in CR aren't as nice as Chile, but they're fine. In Puerto Viejo de Talamanca we stayed at Rockin J's, which is a Lonely Planet pick, but which we were all kind of meh about. It was weird, there's a tent city with about 60 tents lined up in neat rows that you can rent if you don't want to pay for a room. Anyhow our room was cool: a three-tiered loft bed with a really high ceiling. We all got very, very drunk that night on the beach with a bunch of locals.
Feb 2
Moved to a hostel a little ways down the road, which turned out to be a really good choice. This day we wandered around town, read on the beach, Katy worked on a big scholarship application and April and I just chilled. We ended up in bed pretty early after our big blow-out the first night.
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