Hotel Malinche Quepos

... more around, and one monkey quickly turned into about a dozen monkeys. I had poked into a far corner by the fence to try to get a picture of a nearby monkey, when all the sudden the monkey started heading straight at me, flying pretty quickly through the trees. Luckily, it stopped about 5-10 feet away, and proceeded to do cute things, almost as if it was posing for pictures. We watched this troupe of monkeys for quite a while, as they were putting on a ...

... and what do you know, there they are. It makes everything feel very quaint. Anyway, we chatted for a bit and then headed over to the group dinner. It was our second and last meal together as an entire group. It was definitely a tiny bit sad, I've become really fond of a few of the people we've been traveling with, and I will genuinely miss them when we leave. The Canadian ladies had knocked off 'Do You Know the Way to San Jose?' poking fun at each member of the group. It was ...

There are no classes at weekends so these offer ideal opportunities to explore further afield. Several of us decided to visit the rainforest reserve that is Manuel Antonio National Park today, which is a relatively short two hour bus ride from Jaco. Not that we got the bus there. We were at the bus stop by 9am which was when the bus was timetabled to arrive, and this time was verified by a Tico - the term for a native Costa Rican - who was also there waiting ...

... lane bridges to the north. If we had seen a similar place in Detroit, we would have locked our doors and left town. But in the next few days we got used to the town and shopped and ate there (amazing what happens when you adjust to the environment). The town and park of Manuel Antonio is up the hill and above the town of Quepos. We called and got directions to our lodging at Blue Banyon Inn. We found out it was outside the city ...

... with several unsavoury characters hanging around on the street corners hassling tourists (well certainly me , anyway) and trying to sell various illegal substances - all I actually wanted was an internet cafe but that seemed to be a far more problematic thing to find so I just grabbed some food and walked at pace back to the relative safety of my hotel. Couldnt get a bus back to San Jose in the morning as all the express buses were full so I ...

... than that, the drive was pretty uneventful, with the exception of a brief detour we took to look at a river full of crocodiles. There were more than twenty crocodiles sunning themselves on a river bank, and it was a pretty spectacular site. It was also a bit scary, because most of them looked like logs--it would be very difficult to tell if something in a river was a log or a crocodile. We finally arrived in the town of Quepos, which ...

... Quepos isn't very big so it's easy to find places. We're now set up for breakfast anyway. It poured rain yesterday at dinnertime for about 4 hours, which is unusual for this time of year. We took refuge in one of the restaurants and enjoyed "happy hour". At a break in the rain we made it to the El Gran Escape restaurant for a nice dinner. Today we hiked up the hill behind Las Cascadas and caught the bus to Manuel Antonio to ...

... tourists as well. We found a nice area by the National Park that is less crowded. Neko likes to swim like a fish but he also likes us to bury him in the sand!! I myself enjoy napping in the sun and collecting shells. But i did venture out into the ocean- you'd be proud, I'm facing my fears!! Sending you all lots of love! ~Danie

... mmm...so what's new!  While I was diving Dave hired a couple of scooters to tour the island. The first one broke down half way round so Dave being Dave took a taxi home and told the guy where he could find his ····ing bike, and he'd like his money back too please. The second one behaved better and I was treated to a pillion ride after I'd finished my course. In some ways it felt like I was a teenager again but in other ways it put years on me. I felt very ...

Hi everyone! Getting back to La Palma from Drakes Bay was interesting. If I thought the bus ride to Drakes Bay was scary, I was wrong. After 2 days of a lot of rain, the streams that were 6 feet wide were now over 20 feet wide. The water came onto the bus it was so deep. We didn´t switch buses this time, we just stayed on the one big bus for the whole ride. But I survived. My adventure to the indigenous family was really nice. I lucked out and both ...