*our* beach - manuel antonio

so pretty much every saturday and sunday most of us went to the beach. and why not - just a 15 minute bus ride away is the town of manuel antonio - where there is a nice public beach and a beautiful national park. and it only cost 105 colones (about 20 cents) to get there. the ultimate cheap weekend trip. plus lots of beach side restaurants and bars with 2 for 1 happy hour specials. :)

here i am surfing. it was my second attempt ever (i had tried it in hawaii too) - but it was a little bit different. in hawaii we were out kind of far and i actually had to paddle quite a bit and then was assisted with a little shove from the instructor. in manuel antonio we were about chest deep in the water and basically we were just lying on the boards and when the wave came the instructor would shove us off and tell us to stand up. kind of strange, but still fun. i definitely got more bruises on this attempt - but my arms and shoulders weren't as sore after.

this is one of the beaches inside of the national park. i actually only went to the park on one day (it cost $7 to get in!!!) during the whole time i was there. but the beaches inside the park were even nicer than the public beach. and the waves were a little gentler so you didn't have to swim out as far to not get knocked over while swimming around.

this is the group that i hiked around the park with - left to right: ryan the lion (there was more than one ryan), me, lesley, mark, and matt. basically all we were doing was hiking through the trails and finding beaches. every time we found a new beach we stopped for a while, had a swim, sat in the sun, and then moved on to the next beach. i did get a little sore from all that hiking around - i'm clearly not in the shape that i used to be and it's been a while since i've done any hiking. but the beaches were worth it.

this is one of the animals that was wandering around the national park. i'm not really sure what it is. it kind of looks like a raccoon and lemur mix. i can't remember what it was called in spanish. but it's not something i'd ever heard of before. kind of weird.

and here is a sunset on the public beach. what more can i say... :)

quepos pictures - for a start

so we're finally up and running with the new computer at home. i've been going a little crazy trying to get my stuff all organized once again, but i've finally got some pictures ready to post. this first batch of pictures are of quepos, the town i was living in during my course.


this is the main street of quepos, such as it is... a pretty small town


here's a view of quepos from the road on the hill which leads to manuel antonio - the next town over, a much more touristy (and picturesque) place.


and finally some views of the coastline in quepos - not really nice for swimming or beaches though.



so more pictures to come. i'm trying to divide my time evenly between sending and uploading pictures, christmas shopping, figuring out my future, and spending time with my family. but hopefully in the next couple of days i'll put some more pictures up.

do you know the way to san jose?

so i'm not technically in costa rica anymore, but i am currently without computer at home (it died a slow and painful death i'm told). just got back tonight and happened to have the opportunity to use someone elses... so i figured i'd do a quick little update while i have access.

so last i wrote it was beaches, beaches, and more beaches... and i think there was another one - we went to playa tamarindo and spent a few days there. it was actually a great beach, but it's a very touristy, very rich gringo area. we managed to find a hostel that was a decent deal, and well, everything is close to the beach. a lot of the restaurants were on the pricey side, but we had some good food and spent a lot of time at the beach working on my tan (and oh my am i tan now - jealous? all you pasty northerners? :P )

after tamarindo we headed inland to arenal volcano. it's the most active volcano in costa rica and it last had a major explosion in 1986, but it's also had some smaller explosions in 1991 i believe. so you can hike into some of the old explosion spots and every once in a while (at least twice during our hike) there is an actual explosion. though really all you can see in the daylight is the ash shooting up into the air. at night you can see the lava actually shooting up out of the top and starting to stream down the side of the volcano - it was sooo cool.

another cool thing about the active volcano is the hot springs it creates. we went to this place called bondi hot springs where they have all these different pools that are various temperatures based on which shoot off of the stream they come from. lots of fun. there was even a swim up bar - and pricey drinks.

after arenal it was a long journey back to san jose so that i could fly home. didn't really see or do anything in san jose, just had some food and went out for some beers.

this morning i woke up early (6am) to get a taxi to the airport. a long day of flights and airline regulation hassles and now i'm finally home. well, sort of. i'm at my nana's. and it's freezing. haven't taken my jacket off yet and we've been inside for the past 4 hours.

so my plan was to do a few posts over the next week or so and put some pictures up - but depending on when the new computer arrives... i don't know when that will be. but for now, i'm home. still trying to plan my future... possibly back to costa rica... who can say.

:)

muchas playas!

we've moved on to a new beach town on the same peninsula (and yet nearly a 7 hour journey to get here) we are now at playa del coco. so far so good, it's really nice. last night was sushi night at this bar/restaurant. a little pricey (for costa rica, it was good prices for home) but sooo worth it. absolutely amazing.

today we rented a scooter and cruised around to some of the other beaches in the area - ocotal, hermosa, and panama. they're all pretty swanky places with lots of new construction and wealthier travelers. but nice beaches and a worthwhile place to sit by the ocean and have a mango daquiri. :)

might be hitting the local discotheque tonight - if it turns out to be cool. we've gotten in such a groove of going to the disco it seems like it's been forever. and there's this lizard lounge place that our driver yesterday reccomended.

so we're off to find some food - hopefully some nachos (though i've been craving a burrito and the only mexican place in town is closed down) and then maybe chill out on the beach to watch the sunset/moonrise.

i can hardly believe that by next week at this time i'll be getting ready to get on a plane to come home... a few more beach days and then off to arenal volcano, i think. :)

the mountain of zuma (montezuma)

so the end of the course was a bit of a rush and everything was crazy. people were losing their minds (myself included) trying to get all their lessons planned and approved and making posters and visuals and oy vey. then there was all the paper work we needed to hand in.... but i'm happy to say that i finished the course, i have my certificate and a letter of reccomendation from the school. sigh.

had a bit of a crazy night the last friday. first there was our free graduation dinner - which was really good. mahi mahi and wine and champagne. then the plan was that a small group of us were going to do a little traveling together. actually the original plan was to go down to panama for a few days - boca del toro or something - and do some snorkeling. after that some of our friends were flying to equador and the rest of us were going to work our way back to san jose.

but then they weren't going to be able to fly out of panama, they would have to fly out of san jose. so it didn't really make sense to go all the way down to panama (a very VERY long bus journey) just to have to make the same trip back. so instead we were going to go south from quepos and hang out on the osa peninsula. and so that was the plan. until friday night after dinner about 6 hours before our bus was supposed to leave (at 5:30 am)

then we get to thinking - getting to the osa peninsula is still a lot of bus riding and still a long way back to san jose. so why not just go somewhere a little closer. so the new plan was to go north on the pacific coast to the nicoya peninsula, find some beaches, and do some snorkeling. and that bus didn't leave until 7:30am - so then the great debate, to sleep or not to sleep. it seemed to make a lot of sense not to sleep when the bus was at 5:30, but 7:30 seemed like it merited at least an attempt at a couple of hours. there were mixed opinions. so some of us stayed up and some of us opted for a little shut eye (can you guess which group i was in? the sleeping one).

however. as nice as it was to get a little shuteye we ended up sleeping past the 7:30 bus. oops. so we sent out a spy to find out when the next bus was - 10:30. no problem. a little more sleep, a long bus ride, and a ferry and we actually managed to catch up with the rest of our group. we all rolled into montezuma around 5:30pm and found a place to stay. after dinner we pretty much crashed out after the long travel day.

sunday we did a little (half an hour) hike to this waterfall near here - which was beautiful. we wandered on the beach, worked on our tans, and made ourselves a bonfire in the evening. the hostel we're at is actually right on the beach, so that's pretty much where we all meet up in the morning. today some of the boys are attempting to do some spear fishing. some local guy told them it might be possible to catch lobsters! if that actually happens i would be pretty happy. (i'm not holding my breath)

tomorrow some people are heading to the airport and the ones left will likely move on to some other beach. possibly to the arenal volcano and hot springs.

oh yeah. montezuma. that's where we are. :)