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Published: November 17th 2010
When our plane finally landed we rented a car and got going to Puntarenas where our boat Samantha was at at the time. When we got there my dad had some shipping problems with both a hooka, a scuba diving item that we bought for the trip, and something that my dad brought down on a plane. Since we had to wait until Monday to get the stuff we thought we should go on a road trip to a National Park that was recommended for its wild life. The place was called Manuel Antonio. On the drive there were signs that first said 80 kilometers to the place we were going then 120 kilometers which was funny. We couldn't get there before dark so we stayed in a hotel and my bed was in a loft. The next day we got up and started driving to Manuel Antonio. On the drive right at the side of the road there was a restaurant that was made out of a C123 made in 1954 referred to as Olly's Folly. A lot of secret money was raised and went to Oliver North who was in charge of that money and funneling it to
Olly's Folly
Cockpit in a shot down C123the Contras to defeat the Sandinista government. With some of the money he bought the plane Olly's Folly. He kept helping them until it wasn't a secret anymore because Olly's Folly was shot down and 2 pilots died and the 3rd parachuted but was captured. So they had to stop doing it. When we finally got there we got a hotel and got settled and then we went to the park. The first couple of minutes we were walking we saw a deer that every one was looking at. We kept walking and at the end of the main road we saw a sloth high up in the trees. We watched that for awhile because a sloth looks like a big monkey that is really slow. At the end of the road we went on a side trail and about half way through it we saw a ton of monkeys and one of them got close enough for me to touch it. One of the monkeys caught a bug and ate it. Then we moved on. A couple of minutes later we had to cross a river and my mom got a cut on one of the trees. At the
end of the trail where the beach was we saw a tortoise like thing then we turned around and where we saw the monkeys there was an ant-eater type thing in the bushes. When we got to the end of that trail we took another side trail, but on that one we didn't see any animals. Then we turned back and did a loop through another beach a different way and got back to the entrance of the hike. All in all it was a great hike,
The next day we were at the pool of our hotel and I was swimming and right when I got out a ton of monkeys came to the pool. One of them drank some water from the pool and then washed his face in it. When I got closer to take a picture and a video there were really small ones, and I was taking a video of them and two of the bigger ones got on top of each other and did a hissing type thing which really freaked me out. They were really just trying to protect the little ones. Then at around 11:00 wethe night. The next day we
A Monkey
This monkey is hoping over branches got up early and went to Monteverde. When we got there we had to by tickets for the park. We didn't see a lot of wild life and stuff like that but we did see a waterfall and some plants. We were going to a hanging bridge but we got lost and we came to an intersection with 3 ways that was marked on our map and that was when we realized we were going the wrong way. Then we realized we did a 2 hour hike in a half hour which we thought was weird. Then we had to leave the park because I had to get back to do my school work so we had a really long but alittle bit less bumpy car ride back to Punterenas. Two days later we left for a 24 hour sail to Drakes Bay (named after Sir Francis Drake who explored it) and that sail was the first sail of the trip. We didn't have our sea legs yet so we got a little sea sick. When we got to Drakes Bay it was really late and it was really rolly which was a hard way to end the day, but
we stayed. The next day this girl named Emily came over to us in her dingy and told us that her sailboat engine had broken down. My dad said he would help her fix it but it turned out that it was something different than he thought and he couldn't fix the whole thing. But he did fix one of her engine problems. Then the next day Emily took us into shore to go on a hike. On that hike there were 2 bridges and one was a short small slippery one and the other one was a really long hanging bridge. After that we ran into these people who had moved down from the United States. They managed a hotel in Costa Rica and they said it was very unusual that it was raining so much. Then we went back to shore and Emily was trying to get her batteries for her boat charged and those people we met earlier were talking in Spanish to the people who would charge her batteries. That night we invited Emily to dinner and then later that night we left at 1:00 in the morning to go to an anchorage at the half
way point to a place called Boca Chica. As I am writing this on our cruise to Boca Chica we have already caught 4 fish today, hold on a minute I just got another one, so now we have five fish today but only one is edible and we just lost him when we reeling him in. So I guess we aren't having fish tonight. We are staying there only one night to rest a bit.
We had a really long boat ride on that cruise. On that cruise we had a fishing line in the water and it started to go out slowly and we thought it was just seaweed but when I reeled it in we realized it was really a small yellow fin tuna. When we finally got there it was like 4:00 in the afternoon so we just pumped up the dingy to go check out what was going on. When we got to shore there was a restaurant that was owned by some people who had moved down from the US and hadn't been back in 6 years. The next day we went back and I did my school work for a bit and we
had lunch. The people that ran the restaurant made us popcorn and Dorado. That night the Giants were in the final game of the World Series it was a pretty boring game until one of the players, Uribe, on the Giants team scored a home run and scored 3 runs. Then the other team scored a single home run and it stayed that way and the San Francisco Giants won the World Series for the first time in a long time. Then we went back to our boat to play a game of cards and I won. The next day my dad and I went to the little town and got some food and supplies to last us for a while. Our next stop on our way to Panama City was Coiba. It is another national park that used to be a prison. Here we went snorkeling and fishing in the dinghy. And after a good night sleep we were off on a 40 hour sail to Panama City. On the cruise a slept a lot but my mom and I had to do some shifts to give my dad some rest. Even some shifts when it was dark and
raining. Towards the end we were really close to the Panama Canal and there were 57 cargo ships all waiting to go through the Panama Canal at anchor. When we got to a certain point we had to call a station on the radio to proceed to where we were going to stay while we waited to go through the Panama Canal. The radio station we called said we were clear to follow a certain cargo ship through the channel to another point, the Balboa Yacht Club where we were going to stay. At the BYC we stayed on a mooring ball. The rain continued until finally one day we had a beautiful sunny day. Next time I will tell you about Old Panama and the transit through the canal. Stay tuned for that exciting stuff..
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adele
non-member comment
Andrew.....sounds really exciting!!! love the pictures...still noisy over at Harbor Point with all the construction...glad Buster got "rookie of the year".... adele