Stolen Pizza

When planning the itinerary for the parents we had thought hard about whether to include Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica’s most visited reserve. Reports were that although a stunning strip of sand on the Pacific coast the rush to capitalise on the tourist dollar had rendered it rather characterless and overtaken by a few too many hotels. However, what we discovered on arrival, after finally emerging from our seemingly endless road though a mega farm of palm trees - used for palm oil, was a rather less developed scene than envisaged. There was of course a fairly hefty hotel presence but in the main most were tucked unassumingly back into the hill side with none close up to the beach. Plus even amongst the shops and bars behind the main tourist stretch of the beach there was still some vaguely local orientated places which in our minds we had ruled out completely.

Manuel Antonio was our last stop as we had thought best to let the folks acclimatise a little before being hit with the heat. The beaches of Manuel Antonio with its sand that was too hot to stand on in bear feet certainly served up some tropical temperatures. The slight miscalculation we’d made with Manuel Antonio was thinking that it was a beach with a reserve rather than a reserve with a beach. It left the daily entertainment options a little limited but the picture perfect beach with uncannily warm sea supported by our hotels sunset happy hour kept us amused. When a touch of boredom emerged it was quickly quashed by some banana boat debuts for dads.

The only slight hick up in the proceedings occurred when the Mums took charge of finding lunch. They not only left us close to chewing on sun beds to relieve the hunger from the monumental amount of time it took them in the sandwich shop but they also managed to return with somebody else’s lunch order. The unfortunate victim of this mix up was a young lad who had apparently waited very patiently for an age to receive his special pizza order. He was later seen looking especially glum staring disconsolately into a plastic food container holding our paninnis.

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