Third time's a charm (not that the others were bad)

That's right.

I went to the beach again.

Yes, three times in two weeks. I know. Crazy. 

But hey, I'm just making up for the almost two months that I was here before I had been to the beach at all.

Plus, who wouldn't go to a beach that looked like this!?

So, two weekends ago I went on this trip to the Caribbean, then this last Thursday through Saturday I spent at the Pacific. Then, just because I could (and actually because it was pretty much my only free chunk of time between now and when I leave) I went to Manuel Antonio.

Just to clarify, Manuel Antonio is a very famous and popular national park in Costa Rica, not some hansom Tico man like my family thought before I explained myself. 

Anyway, after less than 24 hours at home between trips, Lauren and Amy and I took off for Manuel Antonio. We got in around 10, and after quite a bit of confusion (all resulting from overlooking the second of the two doorbells) we finally got our room after 11.

The next morning we ate breakfast and headed out for a day on the beach. We walked down to the beach from our hostel, which was quite a trek, but we got some great views.

View from where we started

Yes, we were going down to that beach you can see in the distance in the above photo. I know, I know, its a long way. But we made it!

As you can see, the beach was well worth it!  We even found a nice little cove very sparsely populated. With people, that is. It was full of crabs. This semi-private beach made for a lovely place to spend the morning, playing in the waves, reading in the sun, and watching the crabs.

 The spray of the ocean on the rocks was gorgeous, and always such a relaxing sound! Unfortunately, we had to return to the other side of the beach since the tide had nearly covered the rocks of our escape route.

Hurray for the ocean!

We spent the afternoon bumming around in shops, walking on beach when there was beach to be had (at high tide the ocean comes right up to the mangroves) and eating delicious ice cream in this lovely beach front cafe.

Upon returning to our hostel (going up in bus. We aren't that dumb!) we watched the sun set into the ocean from the hostel's pool, made a very filling spaghetti dinner, and hit the hay.

The next morning, we tried to leave as soon as possible for the national park, since we were told the earlier you go, the better. Which is very true. When we arrived at 8.30 or so, there were so many tour groups all over the path, you couldn't hear anything but tourist chat. Since we were not with a guided tour, we wove our way through the groups until we were in front of them all, and then we started to really enjoy the park.We saw an iguana longer than my arm and about as fat as a cantaloupe, tons of smaller lizards throughout the park, two sloths, a plethora of beautiful butterflies (including a brilliant blue one as big as my face!) and two little wild pigs. Not to mention the monkeys. 

Those guys were a little crazy. They have absolutely no fear of people, whatsoever. One poor picnic-er had his giant bag of potato chips stolen right behind his back. The monkey took it right on up the tree with him, opened it like it was nothing, and ate his fill of chips. 

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself here....

So we got in front of the tour groups, and decided to take a gorgeous 45 minute hike up to a viewpoint overlooking the ocean.

This is part of the trail up to the viewpoint. All the trees there were so cool! 

 

Lauren and I, mid-hike (meaning very sweaty)

And this is the view from the top.

After we climbed back down from the viewpoint, we hit the beaches. One little hidden cove had great rocks to explore, but also a ton of rocks in the water, so we couldn't really swim. Although we did see a huge pelican up close and personal!

We then switched beaches, to the more populated and swimming friendly beaches on either side of the isthmus. This is were the monkeys were hunting. Here we played in the waves, read a little, and I took a turn around the peninsula, to see what I could see. And this is what I saw.

 

Aren't the trees awesome! We saw some other cool plants too. Like this spiral staircase kind of plant.

 

And this crazy vine.

We left the park mid-afternoon (wading with our bags on our heads since the tide had come in), grabbed another ice cream, and headed back to the hostel to gather our things and change. Then we went in to Quepos (the neared town) to kill a little time and catch the bus. Although we didn't. Catch the bus, that is. Not due to lateness or ill-preparedness or anything like that. It was just a lack of communication. We thought when the bus came it pulled into the bus station parking lot, and it turns out that it only passes on the road (which no one felt it was necessary to tell us when we asked about it). So, we went on a little detour, since there were no more buses direct to San Jose. We had to go all the way up to Puntarenas and then back down and inland to San Jose. About twice as long, but we made it. And really the trip as a whole was well worth it. 

Pura Vida!