After burgers, the zoo and frozen yogurt, we drove back to the airport and played Russian Railroads for a while.

I’m in Vancouver now, and it’s about 4-5 hours past my bed time. Really hoping to get some photos done tomorrow since we took the day off work to recover! 😀

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Turns out we didn’t have enough fuel on purpose. They needed to dump some load because of high winds and an unfavorable runway, so they dumped fuel instead of passengers.

A surprise TSA inspection at the gate caused them to take my water and a gift I had bought. Damn them.

We’re in Phoenix with 9 hours of layover. We’re looking into getting a car and hitting an In n Out and the zoo! Tengo mucho hambre!

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50 minutes in the check in line up, 10 minutes in security. Hire a few more people, US airways.

Apparently our plane is landing in Mexico before our layover in Phoenix…to get more fuel.

I have a silly question.

Why aren’t we leaving here with enough fuel?!

9 hour layover in Phoenix, with our luggage. We’ve contemplated going to the zoo, or meeting with a friend of Miranda’s, but we’re playing it by ear. Also known as, pretty tired, may just watch DS9 for 9 hours instead. >.>

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We dropped off our car with no troubles, outside of actually getting to the rental place without incident in city traffic.

We got into some mud.

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We heard there was a farmer’s market in Quepos. We bought breakfast. Mmmm, it’s going to be good!

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We had a huge day yesterday, with 24,000 steps had. We started super early and went to Manuel Antonio National Park. This place was said to have huge tourist numbers, but was still worth the visit. We had booked a local guide before we arrived, as he was #1 on TripAdvisor for tours in the area. A single dude, #1, that’s pretty impressive and he lived up to the hype. He was a 27 year old guy who really loved showing people the park. He spoke great English, and was smart and easy going and we got along really well.

I have a ton of photos from the park, but again I’m going to save them for later so I can make sure I get you the best.

After the tour, Miranda and I had planned to swim in a local beach and then drive to Playa Bellena, also known as “Whale Tail” because it’s a beach that looks like a whale’s tail from above. We told this to Johan and he recommended that we not. His point – you’re going to pay your money and see the tail and then what? There’s not really any shade, and it’s not a great beach, so…

He recommended a few other places, but we really latched onto Nauyaca Waterfalls. First, waterfalls are awesome. Second, the ocean here is super hot and the idea of going to a river and submersing ourselves in cool water (it’s 35C here) was unimaginably exciting.

We had the worst meal of our trip (my opinion) (just a crappy casado is all) and started driving south towards Dominical.

We paid $8 each to visit the waterfall and the lady looked incredulous. It was about an hours hike to go 4km in the heat. The hike was mostly covered by jungle, but it was still swelteringly hot. When we got to the waterfall, it became entirely worth it. There were two falls, one on top of the other and we visited the top one first – 160ft high above us, it soared. I climbed around a bit, and then we hiked down to the second one. The second waterfall had a pool at the base of it that was so deep you could swim around without touching the bottom. We spent a ton of time here, and about 45 minutes later were the only people around in a gorgeous waterfall in the middle of Costa Rica. Unfortunately, this experience doesn’t define our Costa Rica trip, as we’ve done a lot of things, but this was what we both wanted out of the trip. Majestic experiences. And between this place and Monteverde, we got it.

We had dinner at the #2 rated restaurant, called Z, in the area, which was half a block down the street. Excellent food and excellent atmosphere, it was a steak and seafood place. I had the yellowfin tuna, caught that morning. I ordered it “medium” because no one’s ever asked me how I wanted my fish cooked before…I was wrong, I should’ve ordered it lighter, but it was still fantastic.

Bed early again, as the next morning we had a river rafting tour booked!

We’re home again Sunday night, so I’ll be getting some of these photos processed for realz soon!

Just found a crab the size of my outstretched hand crawling around the bathroom. I was sitting down when I heard a skittering sound. There isn’t much that will make you stand up faster.

I had a mouse in my old apartment once. How does a crab get in?!

No photos, I was to busy trying to get it out to think of that.

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Driving from Santa Elena to Quepos started not great. We took the direct route, which was under construction, and by construction I mean “totally torn up and replaced with dust”. There were moments we couldn’t see anything in front of us because of a truck kicking up dirt ahead of us.

We drove across a bridge with a ton of people looking over the edge. We pulled over on the other side and walked towards them to see…

I can’t tell the difference between crocodiles, alligators and other forms of this style of animal, but they’re big. A man was hanging a string with meat on the end of it over the edge and they’d occasionally snap at it. Fun times.

While walking back Miranda spotted this sweet lizard sitting on a branch. I have a long lens, this guy was at the bottom of the bridge. 🙂

We got to Quepos and got our stuff into our new place, which was really nice. The beach was our next stop, and we found a pair of beach chairs for rent and we went for a swim.

After a little lounging, we walked into the closest restaurant for some food. Thankfully, they completely ignored us right off the bat, so we didn’t have to sit around for a long time waiting for them to ignore us later. Found a new place, with a friendly waiter. Back at the place, we hung out for a bit and then had an early night, as we were getting up at 6am the next morning to go to the Manual Antonio National Park. We had a guide booked, so had a schedule to keep.

We’ve been drinking a lot of it.

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We woke up pretty early this morning after going to bed SUPER early, and walked downstairs to have breakfast (included).

Our plans for the day were to go to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and then go ziplining. I’m not going to post any photos from the Reserve because I want to wait until I get to an actual computer and can process them for realz, but it was a majestic place. We live in a pretty green place, but this place is from another world.

We had lunch at Sabor Tico, which I posted photos from already, and then went back to our place where a van was coming to pick us up to go ziplining with Salventura. Here are some photos.

We weren’t terribly happy with this company. The zipping was great, and really safe, no problem. But the guides we had (except for 1) were not great. They didn’t really talk, they had a feeling of pushing us through quickly.

We went out for dinner at a place recommended by our host, De Olivia. While there we started talking with an older couple about the area, and ended up having a really long conversation. We gave them a ride back to our place, where they were also staying and on the way stopped for ice cream.

Really like this place, but we’re scheduled to head down to Quepos tomorrow for some more hiking and some river rafting! I really hope we like the area too!