Day 8: Surfing y Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio

Gavin and I took surfing lessons through Dante’s Water Sports.

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Photo by Gavin

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Photo by Gavin

It was Gavin’s second time surfing ever; my first.

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After surfing, we walked down the road to Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio.

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Armed with a simple map, we followed a trail through the woods which was a large path- big enough for a vehicle- that eventually became smaller trails.

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We saw a sloth (outside the park), lots of monkeys, lizards, birds, another iguana and some funny looking raccoons. After some walking, we came to the beach. It was so beautiful.

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We set up shop there for awhile and took a swim in the clear, warm water.

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Suddenly, we turned around to see the raccoons walking toward our stuff. Gavin and I raced out of the water to retrieve it all. So we decided that one of us should be in charge of sitting with our stuff.

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We left that beach, hiked a bit more and came across a second one. It was really gorgeous and seemed even more sunny.

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The walk back was long but luckily we found enough interesting wildlife and things to keep ourselves entertained.

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Once out of the park, Gavin and I were to thankful to have found one of our favorite fruit drink places: Batidos Cosechas. We were exhausted, probably really dehydrated and had already drank all the water and Gatorade that we had brought with us on the trail. The juice was amazing and pretty much brought us back to life. We walked back to our surfing school on the beach. I sat on the sand while Gavin went out to take more photos.

Then we jumped into the car and went looking for food. It was much later in the day by then.

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We stopped at a local fast food place on the way back and (painfully, in broken Spanish) ordered our food.

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We were both really tired. Gavin watched the Giants game in Spanish.

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I went to sleep around seven. (That may have been sun poisoning or I was just really tired. Regardless, I woke up the next morning very refreshed.)

Day 7: Villa Malinche

We had a wonderful breakfast following the pineapple massacre that occurred in our kitchen.

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I’m good at some things. Cutting pineapples may not be one of them.

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Then, Gavin and I lounged around the villa…

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…with our iguana friend…

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…and later went in the pool.

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I gave Gavin his first yoga lesson and we scheduled our surfing lesson with Dante through our host. It was set for 8am.

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Later that afternoon, we went down to the town of Quepos and got juice drinks.

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Gavin and I walked all around and took lots of photos.

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I bought tamales from a lady on the street.

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We saw a rooster but I didn’t touch it because I didn’t want to have to write that onto my entry form when I returned to the States.

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We ate dinner at a place called Mar Luna.

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