Day 43: Bye bye beach...back to San Jose

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Sorry folks, you've still got to put up with my (Ben's) rambling as I have the advantage of being able to type away whilst on the bus and we're currently snaking our way up into the Panamian mountains...but that's for a blog in a few days time.

We woke up a little disgruntled given we had to leave our beach paradise and travel back to the dirty capital. We could've have easily spent another couple of days relaxing but alas, the tour must go on. It wasn't all bad though, as our public bus back to San Jose wasn't leaving until noon so we had the morning to 'chill-out'.

I rose around 8.30am, chucked my running gear on and went for a jog along the beach. As soon as I opened the front door I was hit with early morning heat. It was such a beautiful sunny morning, another slap in the face given we'll be leaving in a few hours. I jogged along the main Manuel Antonio Beach, immediately regretting my decision to run along the sand as it was super soft and my shoes kept sinking in with each step. As I was running along, I spotted our friend Katerina who was clearly grabbing one last opportunity to play under and over before our departure. And she wasn't the only one, there were quite a few morning beach-goers sunning themselves or taking a dip in the ocean. After running up and back along the beach (4km in total) I turned in land for a bit however it was basically straight uphill so didn't make it too far and lumbered back to the hotel all hot and bothered. I jumped straight in the pool when I got back and attempted to cool down!

After getting ready and packing up our bags, we wondered into town for breaky. We found ourselves at good ol' Marlins again who didn't disappoint for the third time in 3 days! We both had fresh fruit, granola and yoghurt washed down with the freshest orange juice we'd ever had. We had time to quickly do a spot of souvenir shopping before wandering back to the hotel.

We grabbed our bags and walked back into town to catch our waiting bus. It was ok, no air-con but the windows could open which allowed some fresh air in. The thermometer in the bus registered 41 degrees when we first got on, sheeesh!! We knew it was hot!!

The journey was relatively uneventful back to San Jose and we arrived back into the capital around 3pm. We were allocated the same room as we stayed in last time which was good because it had super-wifi reception! We took a wander into town to grab a late lunch at Quisnos Sub (a rip-off of subway I think) and then found a few people from our tour group enjoying a Pops which is this chain of ice creameries that have awesome ice-creams and milkshakes!

At this point, we were enjoying our arvo when I asked Rach what she did with the USB stick that Malita, a lady on our tour, gave to us to save down some photos of the zip-lining from Monterverde. She had given it to Rach on the bus however somewhere between the bus and enjoying a Pops, the USB had fallen out of Rach's pocket. We sort of hit the panic button and hurried back to the hotel to look for it. It wasn't in the hotel which led us to believe it was sitting on the bus seat. Jacob called the bus company however the bus was already on its way back to Manuel Antonio. We knocked on Malita's door with our tail between our legs and apologised, hoping we didn't lose anything of importance. Luckily she had a back-up of everything so all we had to do was replace the device.

So I went back into town in search of a 32GB USB at 6pm and luckily found one at department store for the equivalent of $40...bugger. Oh well, after the disappearing antibiotics in La Fortuna and now the USB, Rach isn't allowed to carry anything of importance in her tiny short pockets!!

I made it back to the hotel in time for the brief about our next stage of the tour into Panama and then we headed out to dinner as a group where we would farewell Katerina and another guy Nick. We went for dinner just around the corner at another hotel which was a little bizarre and we were the only ones in the restaurant however the food ended up being really good. I had a penne pasta dish and Rach went for the fish. It was a bit awkward when dinner was over because as we were saying our goodbyes to Nick he offered everyone his email address. Now this guy was quite a strange fellow from Alice Springs, and had an accent that rivaled Crocodile Dundee. We had barely said 2 words to him all week and those words were about how extremo he was. Anyway, when he offered us his email address, we all sort of just stood there when finally Rach broke the awkward silence and grabbed the slip of paper off of him. Moments later she was tearing it up on the walk out of the restaurant!!

Anyway, early night was had by all given we had another travel day tomorrow and Ollie Murrs would be blaring again at 4.55am.

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