Costa Rica Part 2

 We had 2 relaxing days at the house. We played in the pool, played games and made smoothies. Mango smoothies everyday for me!

Always a gymnast at heart

 Then we drove down to Manuel Antonio. This is a national park that is on the beach. The jungle meets the sand. They have a lot of wild life there. We saw Capuchin monkeys right on the beach. They told us to watch our stuff closely because these monkeys would come and take your stuff and hang it in the trees. We got pretty close to these guys. We also saw Howler monkeys (although they were not howling). We played at the beach inside the park for half the day. This is the beach pictured below. Then we went to a beach right outside the park and that beach had waves that we could boogie board on. We had a lot of fun in the waves at that beach.

 

 We also went to a place called the Waterfall gardens. It was only about 50 km from our house but it ended up taking us 2 hours to get there because of the narrow windy mountain roads. This place has paved paths, a little zoo area and water trails. It was beautiful.

On our last day we went to  beach called Punta Leona. We saw about 10 Scarlet Macaws in the trees, they were also squawking all day long. This beach was an adventure to find. It is one of the only white sand beaches closer to San Jose. We had checked out a few other beaches, some had such high surf that we thought we would drown. Others had black sand that was unbearable to walk on. My costa rica book had told me about this beach so we went out searching for it. In Costa Rica there are no street names. The instructions we had were "turn on the road before the Punta Leona complex". We guessed a few times then drove down a dirt road for a while. Then we parked and walked down a beach and over a cliff to find the beach. It was worth it. It had great boogie boarding waves. Great sand. They had a restaurant at the end. Ashley(my friend) and I(Ashley Potter) went there to buy smoothies but because we weren't staying at the resort we couldn't buy anything. There was a smoothie cart in the parking lot, so we went there. We asked the lady if we were allowed to buy a smoothie because we didn't have a wrist band. She didn't speak English and so she made us smoothies. We paid and left. But then a security guard came and kept saying bracelet, bracelet and a bunch of Spanish we didn't understand. We pretty much figured out that he was telling us that we couldn't buy a smoothie or couldn't be on the beach because we didn't have the wrist bands. We told him "No comprende" and he kept taking to us in Spanish. So we ended up walking away from him while he was talking to us because we were getting no where. We ran down the beach, he radioed something in. We were nervous but no one ever came after us. It seems stupid that they wouldn't want our money to buy a smoothie just because we didn't stay at the hotel.

Punta Leona beach

We had a great trip to Costa Rica. Word to the wise if you go..You have to soak the strawberries in salt water and then rinse them fresh water before eating them. The strawberries have a lot of bacteria on them. Ashley and I found out the hard way and were quite sick.