With the weekend off from classes, last weekend I went to the coast and hit the tourist trail. I went to a small place called Manual Antonio which has a few beaches and a small national park.
After arriving at 11am, I´d found a place to stay and booked myself a spot on an ATV tour (four wheeled motorbike). I thought it would be a different and fun way to explore the area and at the same time an opportunity to meet some other people. It was all of that except I was the only one on the tour so the only person I met was the tour guide. He was pretty cool, though, and because it was just the two of us he took me on paths he wouldn´t normally go through. We hooned around the countryside along picturesque tracks and through refreshing rivers. There had been plenty of rain the night before so there were a lot of puddles for us to do some fishtales. Good fun. The fastest I went was about 45kms but it felt alot faster than that. When driving through a school zone at 40kms in Canberra it feels like you´re travelling at a snails pace but this really felt a lot faster than that but the speedo on the bike only said 45kms.
I expected to get pretty wet so unfortunately I missed out on any photo opportunites as I left my camera back at the hotel. Shame too because we stopped at a cool secluded waterfall with a five metre drop which I went for a swim under. The water was pretty strong and I stood right under it to get a shoulder massage. It felt good at the time but a bit uncomfortable afterwards. I was able to clean off back at the hotel and experienced my first hot shower since the Raddison in LA. Hot water is a bit rare in this part of the world.
Back in town and there was a very small lively strip by the beach where I was approached nearly every five minutes to see if I wanted to buy any weed. Every other four mintues I was approached by poeple touting various tours available.On Sunday, I went with a guide into the national park in the search of some wildlife.The experienced guide knew what to look for and had a keen eye to find the animals. He had a telescope that allowed us to see close ups of the wildlife and take good snaps through the telescope. We found (or he did, rather) iguanas, bats, sloths, a toucan and her baby, spiders, butterflys,and a caiman. I didn't even know what a caiman was. It´s very similar to a crocodial but smaller. We also came across a guy who had found a boa in his house so he´d captured it and was goiing to release it into the park,not before I got a pic with the snakes tail on my neck.
Unfortunaetly the weather wasn´t the best. It was overcast but still hot and muggy. It was a very tiring weekend including the superslow and packed 3 hour bus trip back to San Isidro. I was actually looking forward to getting back to my host family and getting away from the hordes of tourists and touts at the beach.
Living with the family has been fun even if we cant have indepth conversations with each other. And even if they think my eating habits are weird. A lot of the food put on the table in front of me is new to me so I mix and match a bit, much to the horror of the family who can´t believe that I´m mixing the red margarine-esque type stuff with the cheese spread, for example. All the food tastes pretty good. The locals don´t find my name the easiest to pronounce, inclduing my teacher who calls me Spencer, but it´s pretty cool that my host family have mastered it and even pretty cute when 7yr old Maria Angela calls out my name to tell me dinner is ready. At the end of this week, I say Adios to the family as I´m going to be heading south to explore the Corcovado National Park, famously labeled by National Geographic as ‘the most biologically intense place on earth’,so I´m looking forward to that action
ciao for now
Laugh Space 8)
