Costa Rica 10/16

We woke up early on day 3 with great expectations. We were scheduled for our first "tour", a zip-line activity. But first, a digression. As you may know, Costa Rica did not adopt the daylight savings model. Therefore, during daylight savings time Costa Rica is only one hour ahead of SFBay while, at the same time, being in the Central Time Zone. Accordingly, the sun rose at about 5 a.m. Generally we did too. In any event, we woke up to more rain. It had now been raining since our arrival (we subsequently learned that it had been raining since Saturday the 12th of October). We began to get a little concerned that it would rain during the entirety of our stay (we had been warned that it was an unlikely, but possible, scenario). The concern intensified when the zip-line folks called and told us the tour had been cancelled due to rain. We decided to make the best of it and explore the area, including our yard, which included:coconut trees

banana trees
a beautiful path to the beach
lovely bromiliads
and our own neighbors, the Capuchin family. The capuchins visited us most days in the afternoons, swinging about on the trees above the pool,
often with Lena below.

We also visited the town of Quepos, which as you can tell from its wikipedia entry, is not the cultural mecca of Costa Rica. In order to get there we took the bus. There is a single road that runs from Quepos to Manual Antonio National Park. There are few outlets along the road. Most of the hotels and restaurants in the area are along that road. When people refer to Manual Antonio as a town or area, they are usually referring to the area along that road. The bus runs up and down the road, making each stop at half-hour intervals. In our experience, it did not appear that many tourists took the bus (relying instead on taxis), but it worked well for us. Each trip cost 210 Colones per person (approximately 40 cents).

We wish we had taken pictures because the visit to Quepos. Often, with the exception of the natural world, Costa Rica did not feel very different from home. But Quepos did feel different. It looked kind of like a very run-down small town, e.g., lots dilapidated builings. There were lots of people outside who seemed a little run-down as well. The bus station had hundreds of people, waiting for buses in the rain and talking on a large bank of pay telephones. At the same time there were many business that appeared to be targeted at gringo tourists, i.e., tcotchky shops, bars and a few restaurants. They seemed to do brisk business even during the down "green" season. In any event, we had a nice lunch at Milagros, went to the bank (at which we needed to present I.D. to an armed security guard and be "wanded" by a second armed security guard prior to entry) and bought some sovenires. We left Quepos feeling that one visit would be enough.