Manuel Antonio to the End

Our last city to explore before we head home and this latest adventure ends is Manuel Antonio.

We took the boat from Montezuma to Jaco and then a public bus to Quepos and then on to Manuel Antonio. This route cut the travel time down some and allowed us to see jumping rays and dolphins and some sort of long fish as we sailed from Montezuma to Jaco.

Manuel Antonio is a split city. The "center" is at the top of the hill and then the rest of the town spills down the hill for 3 kms, until it stops at the Manuel Antonio National Park, which borders the Pacific Ocean. As far as I could see the town exist solely as a tourist destination for the beach and for the park. There didn't seem to be too much else there besides resorts, restaurants, hotels, and souvenir shops. Keeping all this in mind, it was still a beautiful place and the park was worth the visit.

On the recommendation of someone that shall remain nameless...ahem...Pam...ahem...I made Cammi and I get off at the top of the town when I saw the Manuel Antonio Backpacker's Hostel. I was told that this was a cute hostel with good food at the restaurant attached to it. So I dragged Cammi to the reception and booked us in for a night. We were both glad it was only for the night. The room we were in was reached by traveling through another room and everything in it was white. There were white walls with white bunk beds and white walls and windows with white bars on them. I instantly felt like I was either in a mental asylum or in a orphanage from the turn of last century. The staff were nice, but the place didn't offer a very homey feel.

We dropped our bags and decided to go for a walk to the beach end of town. Along our walk we met a nice guy from the States that had moved to the city with his wife a few years earlier and opened the only frozen yogurt shop that I'd seen to date. We had a shake, enjoyed the AC, and then moved on.

We passed a bar called "El Avion" that is housed in an old plane. The plane used to belong to the CIA and was part of the Oliver North campaign to supply Nigerian guerrilla fighters with money and weapons in the 80s. When one of CIAs other planes was shot down and the mission was blown, this plane was abandoned at the San Jose airport. It was eventually bought by the owners of the restaurant and made into a bar. I think that's a pretty cool story for a bar. Cammi added an EyeSkull sticker to their door. There was also an "805" sticker there, so I'm not the first Santa Barbaran to make it to the plane.

Eventually we made it to the beach and realized that that's where we really should have gotten off the bus. We decided to find a new hostel that we could book ourselves into for the following night.

The next morning we checked out of the asylum and took the bus to the beach were we dropped our bags off for the day. We weren't allowed to check in to the new hostel until 2 PM, so we decide to check out the National Park first.

Manuel Antonio National Park is small, but boast a large variety of different species of flora and fauna. It also helps that there are a series of private beaches that can only be reached from the Ocean or through the park. Most people hire one of the horde of clambering guides at the front gates, take the two hour guided walk to the beach and then spend the day playing in the water. Cammi and I bypassed the guides and went hunting for wildlife on our own. You didn't really need a guide since it seemed that every other person had one and as as a result it was easy to tell when some animal was spotted...just look for the mass of people pointing into the dense trees, wander over, and ask what they were all looking at. 

Once we got to the beach, we bypassed the beautiful blues and greens and continued on the hiking trail around one of the only other open paths. Most of the trails in the park had been closed and therefore you could only walk to the beach, around a small peninsula, and then along another trail back to town. While wandering through the park, Cammi and I saw the most variety of animals that we'd seen since coming to the country. We saw an agouti (like a giant rat), an iguana that had lost its tail to the crazy Capuchins, a sloth eating, spiders, giant crickets, howler monkeys, raccoons, and tons of Capuchin monkeys. The last two were so used to feeding off of left overs from humans that they had no problems sneaking down to the beach and stealing any unguarded bags. They even were creative enough open zippers and pilfer for what they wanted.

Eventually we did make it back to the beach and Cammi enjoyed the warm waters while I kept the monkeys from gaining access to our bags. It was a nice morning.

We spent the rest of the day and the morning of the next day wandering around the different souvenir shops in town and trying out some of the different restaurants. I have to say that I think the best food that I had during the whole trip was in Manuel Antonio. Almost every meal I had was yummy.

A nice little side note: When we went to check into our hostel for the second night, we were taken to a room with only one bed. I looked at the guy and told him that wasn't going to work. Even though we'd reserved a two bed room with fan in the ConEx complex the day before, and confirmed it that morning when we'd dropped our bags off, the girl at the counter earlier in the day had given the room away. After some arguing and phone calls, we were told that we were getting a "super upgrade" for the evening. This "super upgrade" turned out to be one of only two hotel quality rooms at the hostel. We had a two bed, air-conditioned room, with blankets, a private bathroom, a tv (which we unplugged to get at the outlet), and a fridge. This was the lap of luxury for sure.

On the third day, we took a bus back to San Jose and checked back into the Pangea Hostel for a last evening in the city.

Thus ends the Costa Rican adventure.

SIDE NOTE: So the reason I ended up buying another ticket home a few days after the canceled one is because the company that had offered me the job in Afghanistan and then taken it away, told me that the position had been re-instated once again. The only difference was that I now needed to move to Atlanta for a few weeks or months before deploying. I'm not sure whether this makes the opportunity worth it or not.

There was for a short period another position that I think I would have enjoyed more, but it too fell through. So now I'm headed back to the States and have some decisions to make in short order.