Manuel Antonio

After our super long weekend in Arenal and Monteverde, we left the next day for what we thought would be a relaxing two day break at one of the most famous beaches in Costa Rica: Manuel Antonio. We all met at the University and found that our "70's" bus had 28 seats for all 28 of us, so we packed ourselves in and headed off on the 5 hour drive to the west coast of Costa Rica. The drive was like any other in this country, with bad roads and small bridges. This bus was old and it barely made it up the hills we had to go up when crossing the mountains. Along the way we got to stop at a small market to get food, and the fresh pineapples were only $1. We also got to stop at this one river where we saw crocodiles! These things were huge! We continued on and finally got to Manuel Antonio (after crossing the most rickety one way wooden bridges I have ever seen!) Our hotel was a block from the beach and when we first walked in we saw a lizard right in the middle of the floor. We headed down to the beach front to get lunch. I have realized here that Tico Time is definitely true. Food service is slow anywhere you go! Tico's ( Costa Ricans ) have no regard for time and it is not rude at all to be late for anything. So food service goes the same way and it took about an hour and a half to eat. We didn't care too much because it was raining and cloudy, so we weren't in a big hurry to get to the ocean. When it stopped raining a little, we all went into the ocean and body surfed which was amazing because the waves were seriously huge! Way bigger than in San Diego or Fort Lauderdale. We decided not to surf that day because we figured it would be sunny in the morning. We played 500 with a football which was fun because you could dive and not get hurt. So, after we were all pretty tired out, we went back to the hotel. On our way back we saw a monkey up in the trees! This was the first monkey I have ever seen in the wild so I was excited. We all changed and went to happy hour at the bar on the ocean front, and the servers loved us because we were all buying drinks and eating food. It was a great time, and we headed off from there to a discoteca where we danced (salsa and merengue of course) and hung out for a few hours. By midnight we were dead tired from the long day and we took a taxi home and went to bed. The next morning we all awoke hoping that it would be sunny, but it was raining harder than ever, so we pretty much did nothing until we left at 2:00 to head back home. We didn't get to go surfing, but hopefully that will happen sometime in the next 2 weeks. Apparently there is a tropical storm here in Costa Rica and that is why it has been raining for the past 5 days straight! We are all dying to get some sunshine and can't wait for it to clear up.