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OK, So Costa Rica
It's just a blip on my travel map, but Costa Rica was more than worthwhile. droid18 wants to make plans to retire there. Warning: lots of photos behind the cut.

My aunt and uncle didn't meet us at the airport because they thought our flight from Atlanta to Houston had been delayed, thereby preventing us from catching our flight to San Jose. They weren't wrong, but what they didn't know was that we'd been put on an earlier flight to Houston so that we could make our connection. I had to go back into the airport, escorted by security (because you're not supposed to go back into the airport) to buy a phone card and then call my mom and my sister looking for my aunt and uncle's phone number because that's just how unprepared I was when we left for this trip. It's a good thing the story had a happy ending, or droid18 would have killed me in my sleep.

Thanks to my aunt and uncle, we had busses scheduled to take us around to the places we wanted to visit. Tuesday morning was our first long bus ride, about 5 hours to Manuel Antonio. The roads in Costa Rica are absolutely terrible. Imagine driving on narrow, winding mountain roads full of potholes, with no guard rails, dodging the potholes while the oncoming traffic does the same. We definitely put our lives in the hands of our bus drivers, and I have no regrets about our decision not to rent a car. We heard one of my aunt and uncle's friends joking later, "All the politicians in this election are promising better roads, so I'm going to vote for all of them." The bus ride, though treacherous, was beautiful. If you've seen The Motorcycle Diaries or Y Tu Mama Tambien, you can imagine the scenery we were seeing from the window: green mountains, sparkling streams and waterfalls, and, as we made our way to the coast, high, dark cliffs with the ocean below. We also drove through a national park of rainforest, down a small, private drive lined with bamboo, so tall we couldn't see the tops of the plants from our seats. This was my first introduction to the plants of the rainforest, lush and dense with enormous leaves, and I enjoyed the drive, even though it lasted an hour and a half longer than the driver had said it was going to.

When we got to Manuel Antonio, we were very hungry, so we went up to a restaurant owned by Costa Verde, the hotel where we were staying. droid18 wanted to eat there because the restaurant is built around an airplane, the sister of the plane that was shot down that started the Iran Contra scandal back in the 80's. The inside of the airplane is now a bar; it's pretty cool. The view from the restaurant turned out to be amazing, and we watched the sun set while we ate and drank fruity, tropical drinks with umbrellas in them.


view from El Avion

That was my first experience with the quick sunset of Costa Rica, and it took me by surprise; I had been thinking we still had loads of time to explore our surroundings. Once it was dark, though, I was just tired. I was still worried about Steph, too, and exhausted from all the emotions of the past week. I didn't want to waste our vacation, and I kept apologizing to droid18, who assured me that it was fine to just go back to the hotel and go to bed. We were getting up early the next morning to tour the national park, so we agreed that it was OK to take a night off. "It's our honeymoon," he said. "We're allowed to relax."

The rooms at Costa Verde were very rustic, cabin-style rooms, which I loved because it made us feel like part of the environment. We didn't see any monkeys while we were there, but we definitely heard them, along with the constant chattering of the geckos. The room had a refrigerator and a stove, and, later, I was jealous of the people I imagined booking entire weeks in Manuel Antonio. I would go back there in a heartbeat.

The next morning I put on my adventure gear (shorts, tank top, backpack full of snacks, hiking boots), and we walked down the hill to meet our tour guide. "Buenas," he said. "Buenas," I answered. He said something else in Spanish, to which I replied, sheepishly, "I'm sorry. I don't speak Spanish." "Oh, no!" he said. "Now we have a BIG problem!" He laughed and shook my hand, then ushered us into the tour bus. The other couple on our tour was from Barcelona and didn't speak English, so the guide had to switch back and forth, which he did very well. We never did have a problem with language in Costa Rica because we stayed at upscale, tourist-y places, but it made me feel like a moron not to speak the language at all. I really hated it. If I ever go back, I am damn well going to learn Spanish first, at least enough to have a rudimentary conversation. Like I said, it never caused us any real problems, but I hated not being able to really talk to people. We heard and saw a lot of live musicians, and I would have loved to talk to them about music and about what it's like to try to make a living at it in Costa Rica, but all I could do was tip them. (My aunt and uncle were horrified when we told them how much we'd been tipping everyone, but dammit, old habits die hard. We received excellent service at both of the hotels, and our tour guides were wonderful, and we knew tipping wasn't necessarily the thing to do in Costa Rica, but we just couldn't help ourselves. Maybe it was the rare opportunity to feel rich and magnanimous, I don't know, but it just seemed like a dollar here and there was not going to break us and that the people who had made our stay so wonderful certainly deserved it.)

Costa Verde is perched at the top of a hill, and the public beach is about a 20 minute walk down a very steep incline ("and a 40 minute walk back up," joked our guide), and if you walk to the end of the public beach, you reach the entrance to the national park. There's a guy with a rowboat who waits at the edge of the beach to row people across for tips, which we found hilarious because it was such a short trip; we almost could have jumped it. By the end of the day, low tide, when we left the beach for the second time, he had just put two rowboats end to end so that people could just walk across. (He was still accepting tips, though.)


The Beach

Our guide paid our admission fee ($7 each, included with the tour) and explained that the tickets were good for the whole day, in case we decided to go back later. We ended up doing just that once we found out that there were two more beaches inside the national park, both of which were beautiful. Our guide pointed out interesting plants, like palm trees, lime trees, and a tree whose name I don't remember whose leaves are poisonous, and then we went on our animal hunt. We got to study iguanas, bats, a Jesus lizard, three-toed sloths, and white-faced monkeys through his powerful telescope. droid18 even figured out how to put his camera up to the lens and take close-up pictures.

The bats we saw were, our guide said, at home. He told us that he loved to impress other tour guides by pretending to spot those bats, even though, in reality, those same two bats always sleep in exactly that same spot, day after day. It's a male and a female, and they mate for life. According to our guide, even if one partner dies, the other will not find a new mate.


Bats

Jesus lizards got their name because they can run across the water by making little air pockets with their feet. We got this little guy on camera, but we didn't get to see him run across the water. The funny thing about lizards is that they freeze when they're frightened or feel threatened (unless you get really close, in which case they run away), so it seems as though they're posing for the camera.


Jesus Lizard

The tree sloths were actually very adorable. We saw a mother with her baby up in the tree, and they were moving around much more than I thought tree sloths usually did. This made them very hard to photograph. This is by far the best of the 8 or so we tried to take. I am told that it is very, very difficult to get a good picture of a tree sloth, so I don't feel bad that our picture looks rather like a bird's nest. I do wish, though, that we had gotten a good picture of the little baby sloth. That was just the cutest thing ever.


Three-toed Sloth

The white-faced monkeys hang out by the beach, looking for food. My aunt and uncle had warned us not to take anything to the beach because the monkeys would steal it, especially if it smelled good. One of the monkeys was a mother with her baby on her back; it was so cool to watch the baby hanging on as the mother jumped and ran through the trees.


White-faced Monkey


White-faced Monkey With Baby

We saw an agouti run across the path during our tour, but we didn't get a photo. The guide said it was pretty rare to see one on our particular hike, so we were lucky; they're very common in some parts of Costa Rica but not in Manuel Antonio. The agouti was brown and rodent-like but the size of a large house cat. We thought we had seen a "woody" until we looked it up in a guide book at my aunt and uncle's house and figured out that we had misunderstood the name.

When we saw the beach from the trail above, I started kicking myself for not having worn my bathing suit. I was dying to jump into that warm-looking water.

After the nature walk (which was very good exercise, in addition to being interesting), the tour guide and driver served us fresh fruit in the van: melon, papaya, and the sweetest, most delicious pineapple I'd ever tasted. They drove us up the hill to our hotel, where we promptly changed into bathing suits (droid18 was already wearing his, since it doubles as the only pair of shorts he owns) and walked back down the hill. We had asked our guide for a recommendation of a cheap, fun place to eat near the beach, and he had recommended Mar Y Sombra, a low-key eatery right on the public beach. It was exactly what I was in the mood for with its plastic tablecloths and open air setting. We ordered ceviche and sandwiches with fries. We kept saying, "We're at the beach - in January!" We didn't know yet that it was going to rain almost every day, so it was only in retrospect that we realized how truly lucky we were to get such a beautiful day for the beach. There were only a few wispy clouds in the sky, and the sun was bright and hot without being oppressively so.

We went back into the national park to go swimming on that gorgeous beach we'd seen, and it didn't disappoint.


Beach Inside the National Park

I'm used to beaches dotted with umbrellas for shade, but there's no need for that in Manuel Antonio; the jungle is all around! Imagine: you walk through the dense jungle, the monkeys eyeing you, the iguanas keeping perfectly still, until you reach the edge, where you spread your blanket and walk the foot or so of bright sand down to the water. The water is a clear blue-green, and the temperature is perfect. You're in a cove, so the tide is gentle. Far out to sea, you can see a little island, and when you look up, you see the cliffs, overgrown with jungle plants and flowers. The words "tropical paradise" are a cliche, but I can understand why nobody has come up with better ones. "Paradise" isn't the right word, exactly, but that beach was probably the most perfect place I've ever experienced. It was absolutely packed with tourists (as it hadn't been that morning; if only I'd been wearing my bathing suit!), and I didn't even care. droid18 and I swam and played in the water and exclaimed over and over at our amazing good fortune.

We could have stayed in the water all day, but we got hungry eventually, so we went back to Mar Y Sombra for ice cream and headed back to the hotel. It was a grueling walk back up that hill (and I am outrageously out of shape), and we were so hot and sweaty by the time we reached the hotel that we immediately stripped off our t-shirts and jumped into the hotel pool. It was probably the most refreshing moment of the day, just 'cause we'd earned it.

I really did love the hotel. It's run by former Peace Corps volunteers, and they've kept it overrun with jungle plants.


Hotel Jungle

droid18 and I kept getting lost, trying to follow the overgrown jungle paths from our room to the pool or to the front desk. I wish we'd had time to explore the nature trails winding all around the cabins, but we had a very early bus ride the next day. There is only one thing I would change about our honeymoon if I had it to do over again, and that is that I would spend one more day in Manuel Antonio.

After our swim, we showered and changed, determined to go out and experience the night life. I even put on make-up. We took goofy pictures of ourselves on our balcony and photographed the magnificent sunset (yes, this really was the view from our balcony).


Balcony View

We decided to go back to El Avion for more fruity, tropical drinks, which didn't even give us a buzz but which made me so full that I didn't even want dinner. All the prime balcony spots were taken, with sunset long gone anyway, so we sat upstairs and just talked. We heard the band start up right on time, the same 4 guys with guitars and drums we'd heard the night before. They did the exact same set, with all the songs in the same order and everything. Later in the trip, droid18 and I tried to add up all the times we'd heard "The Girl From Ipanema" and came up with at least seven.

As for the nightlife, we wimped out. We're too old. Besides, we had gotten up very early, and the early sunsets kept making me feel like it was 11 p.m. when it was really only 8. So we went back to the hotel, where, as droid18 pointed out again, the privacy of our room was a perfectly reasonable place to spend our honeymoon.

Next up: Arenal.