The drive was one of the shortest if not the shortest since I’ve been here. Manuel is on the South Pacific side of Costa Rica. On the drive there, we stopped where a bridge crossed a river that was home to some crocodiles. There were several groups of tourists and families all leaning over the railing to take pictures of the huge beasts. The two lane bridge had a “sidewalk” for pedestrians that was about two feet wide. There wasn’t enough room for people to watch the crocodiles and for others to walk by, so those walking by had to walk in the road. The bridge appeared sturdy but when a few particularly large trucks drove by, the whole bridge shook up and down.
One person tied a chunk of meat and lowered it close to the river. We watched as 4 crocs swam closer and closer to the meat. One jumped for it and missed, and another jumped and got it. He bit off the string with it, too. A few minutes later, a large black bird landed near the shore and picked and the grassy sand near the water’s edge. Within a minute the crocs had crept very close to the edge of the water and intently watched the bird. Soon after the bird caught on to their scheming and flew out of their range. I was a bit disappointed because I kind of wanted to see the bird made into lunch. We piled back in the van and drove away from the crocs.
When we arrived we checked into the hotel. I roomed with two girls named Leandra and Armel. We put our bathing suits on and went to the beach. The beach area in Manuel Antonio (but not in the park itself) had super cool waves. We went out almost to our shoulders and would ride the waves before they crested closer to shore. After 3 hours (with sunscreen of course) I was a bit burnt and everyone was hungry. We returned to the hotel and washed off the sticky saltwater by jumping in the pool. Then we went into town to eat a late lunch at about 3 pm. By the time we had eaten and paid it was after 5 and the sun was setting so we went down to the beach and took pictures of the sunset. After the sun was gone we returned to the hotel and chilled for the rest of the night. Some other girls went out looking for a place to dance but my room mates and I were already in our pajamas and tired.
The next day, Sunday, was our trip to the National Park itself. I thought we were all going to hop in the van and drive but we walked because it wasn’t that far. We walked almost to the other side of town, turned left down an alley populated on one side by vendors. Almost all the vendors sold the same types of items although there were some things they sold that I hadn’t seen in other tourist towns. They had all kinds of jewelry and dresses/beach cover-ups, as well as an assortment of knickknacks I’ve seen elsewhere. However, Manuel Antonio was the first place I saw heavily embroidered backpacks and lengths of fabric that can really only be described as table runners.. I’m fairly certain that the artisans’ market in San Jose has all these things for cheaper, but I still haven’t had the chance to go. I’ve been here almost a month—sheesh! At least I’ll have 3 whole weeks without an afternoon elective and if my host family tells me it’s okay, I’ll probably go out by myself some afternoon.
Anyway, on our way to the park we walked past all the vendors but we didn’t stop to browse. It was so hot and humid! Everyone was dripping sweat. Even my legs were sweating. I was wearing a light grey t-shirt and by the time we got to the park’s beach my shirt was almost all dark grey. Gross, dude!
The route to the beach was a wide gravel path. It followed the contour of the land—which meant that in addition to sweating because of the 100% humidity (or at least it felt like that) there was a bit of walking up hills and down hills and navigating larger stones. On the way there we saw a couple of black-and-white monkeys and a sloth. The beach was alright, not breathlessly spectacular or anything, but it had a nice curved shaped even though it wasn’t very long. There were quite a few people there because it was the holiday weekend. I didn’t bring my suit but after the walk I wished I had just so I could have cooled off in the water. I even briefly considered going in fully clothed but I didn’t want to be wet all day—not an ideal situation. I hung out on the beach for an hour or so. The sand part of the beach was only about 30 feet wide from the water’s edge to where the sand met the jungle.
We heard that there was a waterfall nearby so we looked at the park map, chose a trail that looked promising, and started walking. What a mistake! Hiking through the jungle with extremely high humidity and never reaching our desired destination made me remember why I don’t really like hiking. It was all uphill. There was a semi paved path that was flat and had slippery areas broken up by stilted stairs in the steeper parts. At the top of the path was a platform that overlooked a little bit of forest and some ocean. It wasn’t a particularly amazing view because the trees were too tall and obscured part of the ocean. The coolest part was another monkey in the trees high above the platform.
The way down was not much better than the way up. It was still hot and slippery. (that’s what she said!!) When we got back to the trail we briefly walked back down to the beach. During our whole monstrous hike we had carried the bags of two girls in the group who asked us to watch their stuff. They weren’t on the beach so we walked back to the hotel. After showering and changing clothes, we went out to eat lunch and look at the souvenir shops. I ate two delicious, filing burritos. They came in a set and they weren’t huge. Then we went out to the shops. I was able to look closely at the souvenirs. However, I didn’t buy anything. I was considering buying a fan to circulate the air near my face but they were $8. No grahseeus.
Later on, the bus took us into the main area of town which was about 3 miles away. We stopped at an ATM and I got cash to pay for parasailing. All 18 or so of us went to a restaurant nearby. The service was incredibly slow. I wasn’t very hungry and things were kinda pricey so I just had a soda and french fries. (Real healthy, huh?) It took over an hour to get our food after ordering and probably close to 45 minutes just to get glasses of water. There was only one server but he wasn’t that busy—there were only two groups of two people each besides us. After dinner we returned to the hotel and relaxed the rest of the evening.
The next morning, Monday, was the national holiday. We ate an early breakfast and were at the parasailing place at 9am. We had to walk across most of the beach to get to the launch point. We watched as a man and a woman were launched. They had to try twice because the first time something went wrong and the fell into the water about 15 feet from shore. They came back about 20 minutes later swimming from the boat to the shore. Lisa, a woman from my Spanish class, went first with another girl named Emily. Their launch had no problems. They also returned in about 20 minutes. Then it was finally my turn to go up with Leandra. Our launch was also without hitches.
Parasailing was amazing! We went high into the air very quickly. While the other groups had mostly flown parallel to the shore, during our turn the boat driver (captain??) took us more or less straight out. There were a series of small islands tha we went past. I estimate that we ended up a mile from shore because we were far away from the islands and they were far away from the shore.
When the ride in the air was over, the captain slowed the boat down and we drifted closer and closer to the water. While our landing wasn’t gentle, the anticipation was probably more painful than the actual landing. Watching the water come up to meet my feet and not having any control over it was a little bit terrifying. We did go down a few feet from the surface of the water which wasn’t too bad. What made it worse was unhooking our clips and kicking free of all the cables and trying not to get kicked by Leandra. We swam to the boat and clambered in. The boat driver collected the parachute into a large bag. He began to steer the boat towards shore when he pointed far away and told us that there were turtles there. It just looked like a tiny speck to me but when he motored closer I saw that there were two turtles very intently working on making some turtle babies. It was SO AWESOME! They were pretty big, too, maybe 30 inches across their shells. They have flippers and were greenish and yellowish. Unfortunately we couldn’t get any pictures because Leandra’s waterproof camera ran out of juice. We watched them for a few minutes and then started back to shore. THEN we saw a few dolphins swimming together. At first we could see three, then four, then five. They swam together, and even swam around and under the boat. They were also an amazing surprise. Dolphins are really beautiful creatures. We ran to either side of the small boat to watch them as they swam around. When they swam father away from the boat, we followed them slowly. We spent so long watching them that on the way back, the guys on shore radioed the boat to make sure things were okay.
When the boat was about 30 feet from shore we jumped out and swam until we could stand up. We removed the gear and life vests and met up with our other friends to get out money together to pay. We had negotiated a very low price of $45 (originally $90) because a girl in my Spanish class went the weekend previously and haggled to that price, so when I told them about my friend they gave us the same deal.
It was almost time to leave to return to San Jose so we quickly stopped at the market in town to buy ice cream, water, and snacks. We returned to the hotel, showered, packed, loaded up the van, and then returned to town for lunch. After lunch we loaded up the van and drove back to San Jose. I had a lot of fun seeing the wildlife and playing in the waves and going parasailing. I am so lucky!
No comments:
Post a Comment