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Published: August 16th 2009
Monkey Love
Paris the duck makes a new friend. I arrived at San Jose airport typically tired and bedraggled, with no local currency and only the name of a hostel to stay at in Alajuela. So there I was pondering if taking 50000 Colones out of the ATM was too much or too little. When a guy (Cristian) came up and asked me if I was a certain Mr Smit, whilst declining he obviously saw the slightly lost look in my eye and asked where I staying. Producing the scrap of paper from my pocket with the hostel name on it I handed it to him. Turns out that he grew up in Alajuela and knew the hostel, so he gave them a call and then offered to drop me off as his shift was just about to finish. A hostel drop off and several beers later 2am rolled around and my body suddenly realizing I needed sleep (after 27 hrs up) retired to slumberland.
Rain! I knew it was the wet season but on my first proper day it's just annoying. Wandering around town in the rain I stopped for my first Costa Rican meal, a Taco Bell, never been before and a that moment was all
Beach Life
Swimming at sunset, manual Antonio I could find. Still wandering I decided to get a bus to a butterfly farm, but failed. With the bus driver then trying to charge me for asking him if his bus was the one I wanted.
Eventually I just retired to sitting in the central plaza and reading, where everybody decided to talk to me, including an old lady saying that everybody was going to mug me, some girls trying to learn English, various hawkers and some people from my hostel. With that I rang Cristian and arranged to go out in San Jose with his housemates.
After some heavy drinking and some pretty intense karaoke, our (Cristian, Cesar and I) proposed early start to Manuel Antonio became a 12 o'clock bus, which we only just made. The 4 hours from San Jose to Manuel Antonio first goes over the mountains and then drops down along the coast with some beautiful views along the way. Upon arrival we jumped into the sea on the near deserted beach with the rolling waves and jungle falling into the sea, really beautiful place. The three of us then went out to dinner with Steve a guy from Rhode Island in
Beach Sunset
After the rain the sun comes out and sets. a restaurant with an old plane as the main structure with was cool.
The national park which was right next to our hostel is full of wildlife, and that day I ticked three types of monkey, sloth’s, raccoons, lizards, and all types of birds of my to see list. The viewpoint looks over a small peninsula where the jungle seams to fall into the ocean, providing a lost world look to the place. The beaches here are breathtaking, the water is warm and the beaches deserted with so much wildlife at every turn its hard not to be amazed by it. The hotel we stayed at called La Posada is perfect, run by a very helpfully guy called mike its right next to the gate to the park. An added bonus is that the wildlife comes into the gardens, so when arriving back at four from the beach there were around 40 monkeys in the grounds, as well as two dear. These were the cutest monkeys I’ve ever seen and not at all aggressive, to the state where they would come and eat a banana from your hand. Cristian left Caesar and I to head back to San Jose
so we went and had dinner with the hotel owner and two ladies from the USA.
The next morning was spent planning our trip southwards with a lot of help from the hotel staff and then the afternoon spent body boarding in the ocean. Catching a late bus down to Uvita gave us a great sunset and dusky views of the endless palm oil plantations that make up the man agriculture of that region.
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Dave Mayhew
non-member comment
Family Jewels
I hear that those monkeys can be trained to steal - by the looks of those photos they may have been after your family jewels! Oh, sure - you can tell everyone they were after your rubber ducky... Happy Travels!