Costa Rica Day 2

Shana and I began with a great breakfast- Unfortunately there were some ants that realized this as well, and within a remarkably short period of time Shanas plate was swarming with them. After breakfast we took a walk on the beach, which was very rocky and covered with rubble. The sand was quite coarse and dark (I learned later that this is because the sand has been generated from black, volcanic rocks) but the beach was beautiful and the waves were very large. Many travel to Jaco simply to surf.

Shana swam in the pool for a while while I finished the Troost book. An iguana made something of a show crossing the stone bridge over the freeform (sort of like a fat figure 8) pool. He stopped midway to glance at everyone, and then completed his trek and ran up into the bushes on the right side of the pool




We walked into town to get a coffee and check email (I know, I know). We found that Obama won the Iowa Primaries by a significant margin which was kind of a really pleasantly shocking thing. The coffee shop was nice as well, and we got some good travel advice from the surfer dude who owned it (mostly self evident, but nice to have re-enforced I suppose--be pretty vigilant about your belongings in Jaco, and don't carry large amounts of cash around.

We headed back to the Hotel to pack and get ready for our 11:30 ride to Dominical, which arrived a bit early. The roads were quite bumpy and the trip was pretty long. We stopped about halfway through in Manuel Antonio. Our driver took us to a hotel that had the best view of the area so we could take pictures.


We ate lunch at a restaurant called "Anaconda" with a beautiful view of the famous park there with surrounding ocean and mountains.






This was the first (but not last) time we heard a howler monkey, which made decidedly strange noises- Long guttural warbling moans. At first I thought it was some kind of mountain lion. The lunch was also quite good- I had a fish-burger type thing, which was pretty remarkably rare for a fish, but excellent nonetheless. Sort of like scalded sushi on a bun.

By the time we reached Dominical, I was pretty exhausted- I was in the last throes of what, in hindsight, must have been an upper respiratory infection. So while Shana walked into town, I slept at our hotel, the Villas Rio Mar. One of the funny things was seeing all the Christmas decorations and nativity scenes in this tropical climate. Here is a Christmas tree in our hotel lobby.


Domincal is a surfer haven and the beach was full with surfing enthusiasts.


And another beautiful sunset.



I was able to rouse myself by 6:30 however, and we took a taxi into town for dinner. After wandering around for a short bit (The two restaurants we had sort of earmarked from the travel guides didn't look that great) we settled on a sort of surfer-bum tex-mex restaurant. They had great (like surprisingly good) guacamole and the mahi mahi fajitas were really good as well. After dinner we made our way back to the hotel and crashed for the day.