Vista Serena Manuel Antonio National Park

So yesterday I kind of overslept. I had set my alarm for 640 but I didnt wake up until 710, so I was left with 30 minutes to take a shower and rush up to the university to catch my bus. And what was amazing is that I actually made it on time, but the bus wasn't there. After about 30 minutes it still wasn't there, so I went up to Tico Viajero (the travel service for students on campus that I booked the bus through) to see what was up. Well Interbus had made a mistake on my pickup location and ...

Today I did nothing, for a change. And to quote Ron Livingston's character in the movie Office Space, it was everything I dreamed it could be. Well, almost nothing. We arrived in Manuel Antonio last night (we hired Gustavo again, since there were nine of us) and went out to dinner and then to a bar. So after sleeping in a little this morning, we had some sweet bread with cream cheese and hostel coffee, then took the bus to the beach. The boardwalk was lined with jewelry stands, and we took ou...

My great aspiration for this trip to Manuel Antonio was to see a monkey, so while the girls wanted to go to the beach again today, I decided to head to the Parque Nacional to stalk some critters. Park admission was ten bucks, and it was posted in American dollars, not colones. It's free for Ticos, which seems fair to me. Most of them can barely afford to go sight-seeing in their own country, as foreign investors are buying up beachfront properties to build expensive hotels for international v...

We left Hostel Vista Serena at 10 and caught the bus from Quepos half an hour later. It cost 900 colones each and took a little over 2 hours in a sardine-packed sweaty bus to arrive at Jaco. We were hot, sweaty, and dying of heat exhaustion, but the second we stepped off the bus our moods were brightened. Jaco is such a welcoming area. It was sunny and warm, had streets full of surf shops and little restaurants, and the smell of salt water and sand filled the air. We searched for a hostel and...

I write to you from paradise, otherwise known as Costa Rica! It was a bit of a mission to get here especially as weīre only staying two days buttotally worth is anyway. From Mexico City it was a 3 hour flight, then a 40 min taxi ride from the airport to the coca cola station... and then a 4 hour bus ride to Manuel Antonio. Itīs only 200km but itīs a steep and windy road, on a very uncomfortable un air conditioned bus! The hostel we are staying in has an aboslutely gorgeous view of the hills a...

So we left Alajuela after two uneventful days of helping Anikah get "back on track" with her sleeping schedule (meaning forcing her to nap against her shrieking-strong will), and headed for Quepos, which is a town on the Pacific coast that is the gateway to Manuel Antonio National Park. I should mention that there are a lot of national parks and conservation areas in Costa Rica; this is, of course, a good thing, because this is an insanely, intensely beautiful country with an incredible numbe...