Day 1 - Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

On Saturday night we boarded our plane to San Jose, Costa Rica. We had a brief layover in Denver which turned into a longer than brief situation when it turned out a passenger hadn't made it onto the flight meaning that the ground crew had to take each bag off the airplane until they found his. It took 90 minutes!

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

We got into San Jose around 6:30, proceeded through customs, then a helpful taxi shuttled us to the Coca-Cola bus terminal in San Jose which was about 20 minutes away. It happened so fast that it was a bit surreal. We had missed the 7:00am express bus to Manuel Antonio (unfortunately) and the next colectivo bus was leaving at 10:00am. We walked around the bus terminal which was a maze-like hall of vendors selling everything from toiletries to fruit. We stopped at a well lit pastry shop across the street from the station to get settled and saw a fight happen between a homeless guy and a doped up young guy. Welcome to Costa Rica!

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

After wandering around the seediness of that area, we still had a little bit to wait for our bus. We were expecting it to be quite low key as the 4 hour bus ride only cost us $3 each. To our surprise, the bus was actually pretty nice, similar to tour buses in the US except there was no A/C. Muy autentico.

We were exhausted so there was quite a bit of napping though maintaining a keen eye on our baggage above. It was humid, humid, humid and sitting next to the window was my best friend. At one of the bus stops, Boo got off and bought me some fried corn empanada things. Not too delicious but good sustinence.

We're not in America anymore!

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

It's hot!

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

We finally made it to Quepos around 2:00PM and it was pouring rain! Luckily the bus to Manuel Antonio was ready to leave when we got there and it was only 200 colones (about 30 cents). They dropped us pretty much right outside of our hostel which is located on this narrow 2 lane road that ends at Manuel Antonio National Park.

From the hostel balcony

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

From Greg and Sal's Grand Adventure: Costa Rica

After a long nap and getting settled in, we headed to dinner suggested by Lonely Planet at a place called ¨Ronny´s Place" where we had some delicious seafood. I´ve never really enjoyed lobster but this place was bomb, possibly because everything was drowned in butter. Plus it was an open air restaurant, super laid back, and tropical feeling. But no sangria for me because they had bananas in it :(

When we headed back to the hostel, we decided to lock down the next day´s activities. We had been planning to go explore the park but we were told that it was closed! What the hell! So instead we thought we´d take advantage of the time and book an adventure. That being said, after we consulted with the guy working the front desk, we decided on zip-lining/canopying even though we had been planning to do that in Monteverde as well.

Day 1 done!