Day 3 – Tuesday 12/9/2008 (…continued)
After about an hour on the road to Manuel Antonio, we decided to look for a place to grab some lunch. This proved to be more difficult than you would think. The road we were on was not a highly traveled road between popular touristy destinations. I had some trail mix to tie me over until we found a place to eat, and I offered Bobby some. He informed me that he was “over” the trail mix and beef jerky, he wanted real food.
We happened upon a place that looked decent, clean, and there were several cars parked in front…all very good signs in CR. It was called Café Macadamia. We walked into the smells of coffee and sweets baking. The first thing I noticed were all the pies, cookies, and cakes cooling on a ledge between the kitchen and the dining room. YUM! We sat at a small table with a window view over beautiful I have to tell the story about this crazy “unisex” bathroom….
I walked around the corner into an open-air hallway and noticed the separate sink first. Then I noticed the outside wall of the restaurant was lined with outhouse-looking stalls. The latch to get into a stall was a sliding mechanism that could be locked on the outside. I went to the middle of the line of stalls and slid a few of the latches in and out to try to find an open one. I finally did find an available one and went inside this tiny stall. You know…the kind that is so tiny you barely have any room between your knees and the stall door. I had not been in there a minute when I hear someone sliding the latch on my stall door. I said aloud, “just a minute” and the chick on the other side said, “oh, sorry”.
I immediately thought it was odd that she also went to the middle of the line of stalls and picked the one I occupied, but whatever.
I got back to the table feeling pretty pissy. I told Bobby about being locked in and asked him how long it would have taken him to come looking for me. He said he was about to do just that, because he was already starting to wonder where I was. But somehow I kinda doubted he was about to start looking for me…he was way too engrossed in his conversation with the
For lunch I had a yummy veggie sandwich and about the time I finished my lunch, Bobby finally got his mahi mahi. Funny how it works…if you ask the server if the dish is quick to prepare, that is always when it takes the longest.We knew we were in for another long drive, and still paranoid from the events of our first night….so we rushed through lunch and the owner noticed. He came over and asked us where we were going. He told us he had a short-cut that would knock off 30 minutes from our drive. 30 mins? Hellz Yeah – I’m in. He drew us a map and listed directions for the turns in perfect English. Nice.
We followed his directions that took us on a long, hilly, BUMPY dirt road through ranches and the earlier mentioned windmill farm. We were nearing the end of the dirt road, where it met the highway we wanted to be on. As we topped the last hill, we almost plowed right over two “birders” and their telescopes…all hanging out in the middle of this narrow dirt road. Stupid Birders.
We drove for about 4 more hours to our destination of Manuel Antonio. Along the way we drove along the Pacific coastline, through traffic heavy construction zones, and across one-way bridges. Yes, the lines of cars had to take turns crossing these old rickety one-way bridges. Sometimes we had to wait in these lines for 20-30 minutes.We FINALLY made it to our hotel: Costa Verde. Thankfully, we got there well before the office closed and with plenty of time to clean up before dinner.
We had a room with a magnificent view of the
We cleaned up and headed to dinner at El Avion…referred to us by some friends who had been to CR the year before. Technically, they didn’t refer us to eat there, but just to go check it out and enjoy the bar inside of Oliver North’s airplane during the Iran-Contra Affair.
They were right, this place was pretty cool. The entire restaurant was built around the airplane with the bar inside the fuselage. Dinner was a bust. Bobby & I got into our only argument of the entire trip. We survived some serious testing of our relationship through finding our way in an unknown country with non-existent signs, and no GPS, but we had had a spat about cigars at our nice dinner out. Go figure.
Would you like to have a little pasta with that hair? There is nothing that will turn my stomach from starving to not hungry faster than finding a foreign hair in the food in front of me. Perfect.
We got through the terrible dinner and decided that it would be best to call it a day. Back at our huge hotel room, we washed some stanky clothes in the sink and then settled in on the balcony to do some reading while we listened to the waves crashing below.
Day 4 – Wednesday 12/10/2008
We woke up early to a gorgeous sunny morning. The view from our balcony was magnificent. The sun’s rays reflected on the ocean and made it glisten in the morning light. We rushed through breakfast at our hotel (beans & rice of course), and loaded up on the tour bus that picked us and our small group up at our hotel. We road about 10 minutes to the
For some strange reason, our tour guide was an expert on trees. So we got the full run-down on all the different types of trees and what they are good for in our 3+ hour tour. I didn’t pay attention to the stupid tree talk at all. I was way too interested in the wildlife. We saw birds, butterflies, snakes, iguanas, lizards, bats, anteaters, raccoons, sloths, and some awesome howler monkeys.
We admired the amazing picturesque beaches that are part of the national park, and decided that we would come back for some beach time after lunch.The tour concluded and dropped us off at our hotel. We got our beach gear together and headed back to the same area we had just left. We had seen a variety of open-air restaurants promising the freshest mahi and tuna, and we were craving some good seafood.
We parked near the beach area. As we paid the guy to watch our car, he asked if I liked Monkeys and pointed to a tree area where a whole group of white-face monkeys were frolicking, chasing each other, and swinging from tree to tree….just feet away from me. I took TONS of pictures and video and just stood there watching them in utter amazement for about 20 minutes.
The hunger finally got the best of Bobby and he forced me to leave the monkeys, so we could search for the freshest seafood. We found it…at The Marlin Restaurant. Yummy Maihi and Shrimp! This place was a really cool, laid-back place that really embraced the
!Pura Vida! = Pure Life OR Everything’s great!
We made friends with a stray dog who looked at us with those puppy dog eyes like only a hungry stray dog knows how to do. Only, this one didn’t seem to have missed many meals. Apparently, touristy open-air restaurants in
We headed straight for the beach after lunch. I was so excited to get some sand between my toes ~~ that is one of my favorite feelings in the world! We soaked up some tropical rays…the best kind, and took the opportunity to relax. Bobby went out to play in the waves; I stayed on the beach to watch the funny monkeys. They were devising sneaky plans to steal stuff from the people who were playing in the ocean, and not paying attention to their stuff as it got lost in the trees above.
After a few hours we decided to take a break from the sun for a bit and head back to our hotel. We saw some people we had met earlier in the day at hotel pool and decided to join them for while and have a few drinks.
We had a really nice dinner at a Costa Rican/Asian Fusion place called Kapi Kapi. As soon as we sat down we had a dinner guest join us. A cute kitty jumped up on the chair next to me and started playing with the tablecloth. That kitty was too cute!After dinner, we retired once again on our balcony to reflect on the days fun events and listen to the waves crash nearby.
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