Iguanas, Monkeys, and Drunken Ticos Feb 3-4, 2007

I feel like this one is pretty long, and I apologize, but what I endured was pretty dang long to, hence the long-ness.


This was our view out the bus window --------------->


This weekend I was trying to figure out what to do and I finally buckled down, threw my hesitation out the window, and bought a bus ticket to the beach with 4 other students from St. Olaf college. This was a great idea and a bad idea all in the same roundtrip package. For one, I needed to construct a project proposal and I had a lot of Spanish homework. But it was a great idea because this would possibly be my only free weekend in the Costa Rican summer where I could play around on the beach before I have too much of a workload to shoulder and before the rainy season hit.

5,000 colones to get to Manuel Antonio and back, about 3 ½ to 4 hours depending on the situation (you’ll learn more later!), which is about $10 of extreme fun in a cramped bus. Highways here are rarely more than 4 lanes, but the highway to the beach was just a little old two laner, sometimes winding switchbacks with no railings, sometimes wide meandering curves, then long straights through hectares and hectares of suspiciously useless looking palm trees, and treacherous one lane bridges that sounded as if the were falling apart behind you as you crossed the river.

When we finally arrived in Manuel Antonio, short of breath and sweaty, we walked around in pursuit of our lodging, a beach bum “cabina”; cold showers, a toilet, and beds. It took us a while to find since we were told to walk along a dirt path and then to the left for 75 meters, and luckily no houses or buildings in Costa Rica have numbers on them for easy finding. We probably passed it 3 times and even asked someone sitting at the cabina if they knew where it was and they said no. We finally realized that it had changed names (we made the reservation from an outdated guidebook) and found our happy home, for $11 a night (per person). After that it was, get in your suit, slather on some screen, and run for the beach! We decided to wait to try the national park and its beaches until the next day, so we sat and endured the sun of the public, free beach.

I have never in my life had time pass so slowly. We arrived in Manuel Antonio at about 10:30 and were checking our watches at least every half an hour, wondering how many hours had passed already, wondering how many babies had been born, how many galaxies had passed on, and how many stereotypical tourists we could count on the playa. Maybe the beach just isn't for me!




We were all done and baked by about 3, so we retreated to the cabin to clean up a bit, do some shopping and then hit up the 2 for 1 happy hour at Iguana Jacks. Happy hour started at 4:30 and the hour and half before that passes incredibly slowly too. We all had ideas about finding a discoteque to practice our newly learned dancing skills but that was before happy hour. We ordered our drinks, margaritas and strawberry daquiris, and were all expecting to have a half price discount on our tickets when not arrive one but two drinks per person at the table! Man were those some good margaritas! Needless to say we were a little sloshy by 5:30 when we decided to get up and go sit on the beach to watch the sunset. After dinner at we went back to the cabina and were all crashed out by 9:30 and didn’t get up until 9 the next day.


I was toasted, and I mean my skin. I didn’t even bother putting my swim suit on, save my easy dry Hawaiian shorts, and I had plans to play hide and don’t seek with the sun all day.
Iguanas in the National Park are like pigeons in the U.S. Hungry and Pesky. The monkeys are about the same but they are a little cuter and a little more mischevious. I think they were all plotting to distract us with their cuteness, and send their cousins out to steal our backpacks. The ocean was actually too warm for me, you had to swim out a ways to get any cold water, and at that distance from shore is where I start getting a little panicky so I mostly soaked up the “sombra” or shade all day, taking pictures of the iguanas and the monkeys and anything else beautiful that caught my eye.



Costa Rican "squirrel" equivalent



Costa Rican "pigeon" equivalent


The last part of the day was the most interesting. When we all got on the bus from the clearly un-indicated, unlabeled bus stop we boarded with three Ticos, who bust out their mini cooler and continued drinking beer out of the sight of the bus driver. Apparently this is not allowed. So later when more people boarded, we discovered that two of the three didn’t have bus tickets, but just paid the bus driver to be on board. Needless to say they were a bit of a disturbance, “borrachos” as they say, and when we stopped at the bus stop and the one Tico bought another beer to bring on the bus, the bus driver had enough and called the director of the station to make him dump it out. They (the 3 Ticos) made a huge fuss about it. So afterwards, the bus driver made a call and drove the entire bus (50-ish people) to the police station to kick these people off the bus. What a riot! The three of them kept yelling that the bus driver was the problem and to ask any of the people on the bus what really happened. I’m thinking “Don’t tell them to ask me, cuz I’m not going to stick up for you!” These guys were continuously bumping me, and spilling their drinks, and they were convinced that this was an injustice! Crazy, after that the rest of the journey was uneventful, just a silent late night taxi ride back home with my neighbor student, and I was home by 10:30 with my host sister offering to cook me some dinner. How cute! Bueno, since this is long, I’ll cut it off for now, until next time! Pura Vida!