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Published: December 13th 2006
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Hello again! It´s Monday again and I´m back at school. I think I managed to thoroughly frustrate my teacher today - she doesn´t speak a lick of English, and I didn´t understand much of what she said in Spanish, so this morning was interesting. Hopefully the rest of the week is better. More importantly, however, was my trip to the beach this weekend! (Just kidding Mom and Dad).
This weekend I went to Manuel Antonio National Park, which is on the central Pacific coast. I´ve never seen the ocean look blue - it was stunning! My friend Scott (housemate) went with me, and we took the bus. Next time I take the bus I plan on sedating myself first - driving through the mountains on a bus full of Ticos is a nail-biting experience. On the way we met a handful of people from the U.S. who were travelling the country. When we arrived in Manuel Antonio, I got to see the ocean here for the first time. Beautiful!!! It´s kind of a touristy town, but the people were so nice and the vibe was totally chilled out. The hotel also had a great view of the ocean. Friday night we didn´t do much, except plan the rest of the weekend.
Saturday morning we were picked up at the hotel and zipped to Quepos, a nearby town, and into the primary/secondary forest of the area for a zipline tour of the canopy!!! Basically, there were platforms set high up in the trees all around the preserve, and you take a zipline from tree to tree and see the forest, much like Tarzan. The group we were in had people from British Columbia Canada and Austin Texas, of all places, and another dude from Italy. We got to see howler monkeys, and poisonous frogs, and BIG ants (probably a good inch long), and birds and butterflies. We were also high enough in the mountains to have a panoramic view of the area, which was incredible. Thankfully we had time to rest and look around, because I prefered to fly along the ziplines instead of going slow like the other people, which the guides found amusing since I was the smallest. After the tour we were taken back to Manuel Antonio. I walked around and looked at all the stuff people were selling, then had dinner at The Mono Loco (The Crazy Monkey). It rained the whole evening, but at night we went to a little open-air bar on the beach, where the Italian guy from our tour - Antonio - was teaching people to samba. Strangely enough I also met two more people my age from California who live nearby here in San Jose, so hopefully I can get together with them.
Sunday morning entailed hiking through the park. You have to cross a shallow river to get to it, so I took some neat pictures of me crossing it in my Chacos (Hayden, we´re gonna win someday!). The park is surrounded by the Pacific on both sides because it´s on a peninsula, so inside the park it was the most humid place I´d ever been. I didn´t complain though! The first animal we saw was a large iguana. We saw a lot of iguanas, just chillin on tree branches and walking around. Someone told us they saw a 3-toed sloth, but we didn´t get to see any. We also saw a little turtle, and a lot of crabs. The crabs are small and brightly colored red, orange, and blue. They were neat looking. As we continued our hike, we saw a brave little raccoon who walked within a foot of us which was cool. At the end point of the peninsula where it turns around, there was a stunning view of the ocean, including many islands where people go to dive and snorkel. The coolest part of the WHOLE weekend though, was when we were about 3/4 done with the hike, and we saw monkeys!!!!!! They were white-faced capuchin monkeys if I recall. They had white faces, and they were little things, so cute!!! They are LOUD monkeys though - they make a lot of noise when they hop through the branches, and they squeak at each other, too. They were dropping nuts and berries all over the place, and squeaking and bouncing around...like monkeys!!! It was so cool, it made the whole weekend awesome.
Sunday I went to the beach and laid out for awhile. It gets very hot here because it´s only 9 degrees north of the equator, so I didn´t lay out too long. I sat in the tide for awhile, then got ready to go. The bus ride back was icky. There were twice as many people, and it was raining. Some parts of the road had streams running across them, and most of the roads aren´t very good anyway. Some parts of the road narrow down to one-way, so that was always fun to see who´d stop first and let the other person go. I was exhausted by the time we returned, and I think my knuckles are still white.
So I´m back in San Jose now. Next weekend includes a trip to the Arenal Volcano, and the hot springs around it. I think more people are going, so it should be more fun. Scott´s cool but it´d be nice to have the company of people a little more mellow who want to do the exciting stuff, but don´t have to talk the whole time. 😊
I´ll keep ya´ll updated on Costa Rica. Maybe next time the email will be in Spanish.
Love you all!!!!
¡Pura vida!
Nikki
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