Manuel Antonio Trip

We left at 9:00am on Saturday morning for Manuel Antonio National Park. We headed Southeast out of Escazu with an initial destination of Aserri because that is what Google Directions told Brian to do.

The trip to Manuel Antonio took 11 hours. As you can see by the map of the new highway we only needed to hop on the highway 27 in Escazu then jump on 34 to Quepos. I am not going to assign blame, but the drive home was 3 hours. Map of new highway

The problem was we were trying to use the new highway which we did not find that day. Most roads are not labeled and the majority of the towns had no signs to identify them. It was a crazy drive that took us into cloud forests and steep terrain with limited visibility and speeds from 0 to 30 mph. This was off road type driving where Brian had to get out and push Robert's Elantra out of mud on one of the mountainsides in the dark. The streets aren't lit, mainly because they are in the jungle and on the side of a mountain. Later when the roads improved, we dodged pot holes ranging from a frying pan to the size of a Mini Cooper at 50 mph, steered around a fallen tree, and traveled through many, many, many, small unmarked towns.  We met up with Robert and Yorleny around 2:30pm (after driving around lost for 5 hours) at a fried chicken place in St. Ignacio which is 35 km from home to start basically over with the drive to Quepos. We arrived in Queopos at our hotel Si Como No around 8:00pm. We went to the El Avion for dinner. It was very cool full of moody lighting and good fish plates. We went back to the hotel and went to sleep. We rose early and had breakfast in the Rico Tico restaurant at the hotel. 

Then it was off to Manuel Antonio National Park. When we arrived at the park we saw a group of white faced Capuchin climbing the porch rail of a building. We  parked, paid our 2000 colones and headed for the boats to lift us over to the park entrance.

But when we arrived, we learned that the entrance was now only an exit and that we needed to go back across and find the entrance.

We found the entrance and bought a ticket and went in the park. We saw 2 sloths, a slew of monkeys, and other neat stuff.

I learned a lot about Costa and Costa Ricans. 

 I learned that Costa Rican towns have a central square that has a park and a church in it.  The churches are generally quite large and colorful. I also learned that there is a bus system that has stops on roads that are unlit and looked bombed out, but sure enough there are people waiting at the stops. It came to my attention that one of the big past times here is to stand outside of the home, or in the street and watch cars and people go by.

I will post more tomorrow about our trip.