Hanging in the Lounge

Oh, the perks of first class. You skip lines, you get a placemat for good food (you actually get food), you have ample drinks, leg room, and pretty much your own toilet. We are now hanging in the lounge. Actually, we brought McDonalds into the lounge, so we knocked down the snooty level. Our flight is delayed 25 minutes, so we just get extra time with a bunch of people on laptops. 

I'm anxious to see my own sloths. This will be the last blog entry of this trip, unless photos of my hail destroyed car are necessary.

Is it snotty of me to whine that they took the chocolate chip cookies away and put out salty snacks?

Last Night in Costa Rica

Nothing Too Exciting Today

We were supposed to go to our monkey tour this morning, but it rained all night...hard, we were needing to go on unpaved roads to get to the hotel.  Since I was pouring, we didn't want to load our luggage into the car, so I decided to email and cancel our tour. Of course, after we ate breakfast, the sky cleared up, but then we didn't have enough time to shower and then check out of the hotel, and we would have had at least a 25 minute drive to the tour of the wildlife sanctuary. I wish we would've gone with the original plan and just braved the weather. 

Instead, we just headed to San Jose. We thought we could dump off our stuff at the hotel and then return our rental car early for a discount. Of course, we didn't stop on the way, so Brian desperately needed the restroom, and this is when we took the Garmin for a wild ride in the city. We really were just circling our hotel...and we finally made it.  We were able to check in, and then we went to the AVIS car return, which is away from the airport and not well marked.  I thought they should set AVIS as home on the GPS.  We got a little discount for the early return.  While we barely drove over 700 miles, we spent 20-25 hours driving in the car.  It is slow moving in CR. 

For lunch we ate at a nice restaurant across the street; we thought it was the Costa Rican version of a Panera with a local flare. We spent the afternoon relaxing in the hotel, and then we went to dinner at Ticontenta, a Mexican cantina across the street. All TVs are set to the World Cup. Brian wanted to ask the waiter to change to the NBA Finals, which we are now watching from our hotel room. 

We fly out early tomorrow in first class (thank you frequent flier miles). We already paid for our departure fees at the hotel desk, so we can skip the line at the airport. Hopefully, we will come home to a dent free car...

Brian's Favorite Part of the Trip

We started off with a buffet breakfast and then met our personal guide, Johan Chaves, at our hotel. Johan is actually the second rated thing to do on Trip Advisor, behind Manuel Antonio National Park, which is where we were going. We drove to the park in Johan's Yaris. We liked him immediately. Johan is a well educated 26-year-old who knows his stuff. He was able to find impossible to see critters, and he was entertaining to talk to. He would find us animals, and we would look at them in his scope. He would then take pictures using our iPhones through the scope. 

We saw several birds and bugs, capuchin monkeys, a three toed sloth, a two toed sloth, raccoons, and a deer. While other people trampled around in large groups, we had Johan to ourselves. We could have walked around the park and seen only monkeys and raccoons.  I can't find anything in the wild, unless it was walking up a staircase, like the alpha capuchin monkey.

We ate with Johan at the Marlin restaurant and had the typical Costa Rican lunch.  We watched the first part of the World Cup match between Costa Rica and Uruguay. The fans were crazy, and the waiters were wearing soccer jerseys.

The afternoon was spent walking around town and swimming in the infinity pool. We ate dinner at Johan's recommendation, Aqua Azul.  Brian and I both had hamburgers.  There is a wedding at our hotel today, so we keep hearing the music coming from the restaurant. 

Our last adventure is tomorrow morning. We are going to a sanctuary that is called Kids Saving the Rainforest. They have done things to protect the animals, like creating a rope system, so monkeys can cross the street without getting hit by cars. They have five types of monkeys there. After that, we are heading to San Jose for the night before flying back to Lincoln on Monday.

Manuel Antonio with Johan

Manuel Antonio with Johan (and his amazing scope)

La Mariposa, Manuel Antonio