Wednesday, June 04, 2008

costa rica day 3

costa rica day 3


saturday may 3: woke up this morning and, after a refreshing shower, went out in search of breakfast. we walked through the outdoor market where vendors were selling mostly vegetables and fruit and stuff, but we also saw a lady selling hats. we tried a few on annie (she had claimed dan's hat as her own) but she always would say that it didn't fit. so we gave up and continued our search for food. we found a bakery and bought some juice and some bakery goods and sat outside and ate breakfast near the dog that was foaming at the mouth.


on the way back to the hotel we walked through the market again. amongst all of the costarican vendors there was this white lady wearing a bonnet. yep a quaker lady. apparently further north in costa rica near monteverde there is a big settlement of quakers. anyway she was selling bread and jam and looked a little out of place, but i guess so did we. there was also a guy on top of a truck feeding sticks through a machine. we came to the conclusion that it was sugar cane and he was juicing them. we didn't try the sugar juice, but we probably should have.


well we packed up our stuff and headed toward manuel antonio national park. it is a park on the beach that has some trails through the rainforest. we drove the windy road from quepos to manuel antonio. when we got close to the park there was an official-looking guy in an orange vest and a name tag showing people where to park. we got suspicious when one of the other guys (not official looking) came by to tell us that it cost 2000 colones (about $4) to park. we watched everyone else and they were paying, so we decided to pay the guy because we didn't want them to be mad at us (and our rental car). so we walked toward the entrance to the park and asked some guides at the entrance if the car parker guys were official, and they said "no, but they will watch your car for you." i hate feeling like i'm beeing taken advantage of because i'm a tourist, but our car was still there when we got back so i guess it was worth it.



this was outside the door of our car when we arrived

at high tide you have to cross through some water to get to the entrance of the park. dan helped annie cross, then as he turned to help eva and I annie sat down in the middle of the little stream. well, as we got to the ticket booth, there was a short line of about 3 people. one of the guys who worked there saw me carrying eva and let me cut through the line and made a lady move her stuff off of a chair so i could sit down. anyway, by the time i sat down for a second dan had made it through the line. during our trip people generally loved seing the kids and going out of their way to help us. i guess that is one reason to take babies on a trip.


so we hiked through the rainforest on a trail along the coast. dan had annie in the backpack and i had eva in the baby bjorn. apparently the majority of people that go to manuel antonio just take the short hike to the beach on the other side of the park as some people were carrying bags of ice and drinks and picnic items. this was nice because the rest of the trails were practically empty. we took a few short, but sometimes steep, hikes through the rainforest where we saw a couple of sloths, a troup of monkeys, and a few other random unidentifiable animals.

annie mostly just wanted to put rocks in this little pond

after leaving the park we stopped at a cool restaurant overlooking the ocean. they had taken an old airplane and made a bar in the inside, and the restaurant around the rest of the plane. it was kind of a fancy restaurant which usually scares me, however i loved it because it was all outside (but covered) and they didn't care that dan and annie weren't even wearing shoes.





we were going to meet chame and jon and their family the next morning at the airport so we started driving back towards alajuela. it was pouring rain and dark. in costa rica you could be where it appears that you are nowhere near a town and all of the sudden there will be someone riding a bike or walking on the road. people don't walk off to the side of the road, they walk the line. this makes for a stressfull drive. well, a couple of hours later near jaco, the rain suddenly stopped, and eva suddenly started crying. she had had another one of her famous diaper blowouts. so we pulled over in jaco (think spring break surf town) and found a place under a lightpost to try and change her. we were on the main street so people were walking by and i had eva in the trunk of the car (the trunk was open) screaming at the top of her lungs. after getting her wiped down and into a clean onesie we decided to just stay there for the night.

getting a hotel room in jaco was a difficult task as everything was full on a saturday night. after trying about 3 hotels we decided to try one last one right on the beach. they had a room which what i understood had a double bed and a single bed. however after paying and getting to the room we had just a double bed. apparently i need to brush up on my spanish, i guess it was a double or a single. we decided to stay anyway and put eva on the floor - which didn't last too long. so the four of us shared the double bed. it wasn't as bad as i was expecting however at about 4 or 5 in the morning it sounded as if every bird from the rainforest was right outside our room screeching at the top of their lungs. not just nice little good morning chirping, but jungle squaking of many different varieties of very loud birds. i acutally started to laugh a little bit to myself as i thought "are you serious?"

Monday, June 02, 2008

soul train

this is a little excerpt from the email that we got from dan's little brother joey joe joe jr. shabadoo. he is on a mission in detroit.

"at this one door we knock on the lady answers and say she doesn't care about the Mormons because they don't believe Black People have souls, (a comment we hear lots) and elder Dedrickson replies back, "It has been clinicly proven a fact that Black people actually have MORE soul than White People." Check and Mate."

i always figured that was true, but didn't know it was clinically proven. wow. does anyone remember that movie soul man from the eighties? that was good.