Ants in my Pants

Day 3 29-6-12 Friday Tico Time Quote of the Day: I don´t know how to hail a waiter. -Jason Wow, the noise of the jungle is super impresivo! This morning around, what we are guessing was 4 or 5, began the loudest animal noise racket that I have ever heard. No question. It woke me up and I wasn´t sure if Jason was awake until I heard, What the hell is that!? I remember laughing to myself when he said this, knowing I was not alone in listening to this cacophony, and then saying, SHHHHHH...animales...shhhhhhh. Jason then confirmed by saying, I´m not getting up to investigate. With atht, it was settled, and I driffted back to sleep. The day began with a nie little breakfast with Freddy. I´m sort of regretting not getting a photo with that man because he is by far my favorite Costa Rican so far. Favorites deserve photos. We were served with scrambled eggs, toast, and a plate of fruit. Basically, what´d I´d like to have for breakfast every morning but know I´ll never take the time to make all of that. Oh, I hadn´t planned on documenting food consumption at all, until Jason mentioned that he was. I will not be outdone by his food rating system. After breakfast, we walked up to the bust stop (about 1/4 of a mile) and were met at the bus stop by an old man who spoke pretty good English. I´m not sure if he wa American. But, I think he was because he was especially keen on how much Subway sandwiches cost. He was heading into Quepos because on Friday´s the Quepos Subway has a deal. One BLT footlong sandwich costs only 4 dollars on this day! He exclaims, It´s cheaper than in the states! He had a big day lined up in Quepos, he told us. He was going to go to a coffee shop, then on to Subway where he planned to buy, not one, but two foot long subs. He was going to eat half and save the others for later. He also informed us that the thunderstorm from the night before had brought on a tornado in Parrita (a neighboring town). We had no way of confirming or denying this but, one thing is for sure, we never heard anything else about said tornado. It must not have been very destructive. Once we arrived in Manuel Antonio, just about 5 minutes on the bus, we ventured for the bank. This was to be our first banking experience and we were greeted with an armed guard that stood atop the balcony ready to fire. That seemed kind of intimidating. At the bank, we also met a couple of Americans that gave us some tips. They informed us there was no real need to exchange our money for colones, because pretty much everywhere accepts the US dollar. Great news for me because currency exchange throws me for a loop! I don´t like dealing in any sort of money. It makes me very uncomfortable so trying to figure things out in US dollars and colones es muy complicado. Another guy gave us some tips on hostels and told us about his life. He was a teacher in Nebraska, then retired to Florida, and now works a bit in Florida but built a house on top of his buddy´s business so he comes down a few times a year now. He was the second teacher we have met on this trip. Hmmmm....teachers flee to Costa Rica? There seems to be a theme developing. Then, we started walking around looking for our room for the night. We stopped at a place called Flor Tica, a backpackers hostel. Their private rooms looked very nice, but we are on a budget (kind of) so we downgraded to the dorm style room. This will be our first dorm experience. The good news is that we are the only ones staying here tonight. We will no doubt miss the a/c of the private rooms, but we do have a couple of ceiling fans. Literally, I mean, a typical table fan that has been mounted to the ceiling. And, there are also windows, though it is undecided whether or not it will be safe to sleep with them open or not. The space is clean, save for all of the ants. I´m not kidding. Millions of little tiny ants scampering the floors. Here´s the deal, I hate ants. They were everywhere this afternoon, but when we came back after dinner they seem to have all retreated to the doorway for now. That´s fine. As long as they stay over there, we´ll be cool. After we booked our stay at Flor Tica, we walked down the road for a bite of lunch. Now, this place, Salsipuedes, was muy interesante. The ceiling and wall decor consisted of several Bob Marley-Rasta posters and one BoSox tapestry. The view from the patio, where we sat, was great, though, as it overlooked the water. They served us this incredibly tasty brown salsa with chips. I could have had that for my whole meal and been perfectly content. I didn´t though, I had a chicken quesadilla and a Tuanis, to drink. I don´t eat a lot of quesadillas but this was the most filling quesadilla ever. The Tuanis (some rum drink) probably helped. After lunch, we grabbed a taxi and heading for Manuel Antonio. We were adamant about viewing the park ourselves and not buying spaec with a guide. However, these guides really know how to sell it. I´m also a pretty easy target, which is not a great quality, in a foreign country. The minute we pulled up they had a spotting scope set up so we could see a sloth climbing. Well, sloths are my absolute weak spot. So, they got me hook...line...sinker. So easy. We ended up going through the park with a guide, which I think was a great decision in the end. I am a total sucker for learning new information, so I was totally in love with the information the guide was sharing with us about all the different plants and animals. I hope I can remember it all! More than that though, I wouldnt have seen a thing if we hadn´t gone with a guide. You needed a scope to see most things and therefore our photos are really good! We saw salamanders, iguana, tucans, land crabs which were really cool looking, black body lizards, Jesus Christ lizards, three toed AND two toed sloths, deer, raccoons, butterflies, hermit crabs, bats and Capuchin (white face) monkeys. We heard the howler monkeys but we never saw any. The money paid was well worth what we got! After the tour we got into our suits and hit the beach inside Manuel Antonio. It was so hot today and I couldn´t wait to get in the water. The water was the perfect temperature. We swam for about an hour or so. But, one thing we learned on the tour is that snakes start to come out around 4 in the park because nightfall is only a couple hours after that. The snakes, being nocturnal, of course come out at night. In fact, our guide told us that park personnel start clearning the park out around 3:45. Neither Jason, or myself, were up for any snake sightings so we were heading out of that place at 3:30. On our way out of the park, there were many vendors selling coconuts, you know where they slice the tops off, and put in a couple of straws. We embraced our American tourist and bought one. It was quite refreshing! We shared our coconut drink on the steps overlooking the ocean. Later, we walked through some shops, looked at some things down by the park before our trip back to the hostel. It felt so good to be out walking around and not sitting in a bus or a plane! After we cleaned up at the hostel, we went out to dinner. We walked down the road a ways and came upon Barba Roja´s (Red Beards). We stopped in for some dinner and live music, if you can call it that. I believe Jason likened the music to some drunk guy playing a guitar with another dude on bass and another on a bongo. It was essentially a jam session. This whole scene was super interesting because somehow we had found a completely Americanized establishment. Literally, every patron was American. We even saw one kid with a University of Oregon shirt. For some reason, however, our server really did not like us. He was very short with us, and we noticed him paying ample amount of time on his other tables and neglecting to come check in with us. We felt very awkward having to flag him down for everything. Hence, the quote of the day. Thunderstorms again tonight. The lightning and thunder here puts on a great show. It´s so warm in our room, I´ve decided to go without my sleep sack. Jason is very dubious but I think I´ll get better sleep without it. Then again, Jason is also keeping a very strict inventory on his bug bites. I don´t think I´ve even gotten one bite yet! Crossing my fingers for my buena suerte con insectos! Pura Vida, Judy