Daylight come, and it’s time to go home. Firstly, however, we had a 7:25 bus to catch into Manuel Antonio National Park itself. We hit a trail, and while I kept my eyes trained on the leaves for sight of a tent bat, I would have been better off keeping them up anyway. That isn’t to say that I ended up not seeing much. There were monkeys and sloths (of all toe counts) in abundance, along with raccoons and bats (in the trees, not tents). We even had the rare opportunity to view a potoo and a helmeted iguana. There were pictures aplenty. We sojourned a while on the beach with a group of bratty children (“Beach! Beach! Beach! Beach!”) before checking out a caiman and finishing our loop out of the park, past some beautiful island vistas and out of the park, where some kindly fish folk ferried us five feet across a stream to the other side, where the bus awaited us.
We returned to El Avión for lunch and gorged on enormous quantities of rice before catching a shuttle to San Jose. Though it was an hour shorter than the previous ride, I would have preferred not to get into a shuttle again so soon. I took a nice nap for the first third, and then we hit traffic through most of the towns. We stopped once at a coffee shop high in the clouds, surrounded by steep coffee fields, which are all apparently harvested by hand, then continued the rest of the way. The van pulled into the Holiday Inn Express, where we had our last dinner at the Pirates Bar and Grill in the middle of a casino. The ceviche and nachos were tasty, though I had zero appetite after a day of lounging. I can’t wait to get back to the gym.
We spent the remainder of the evening tooling around in the casino as Mom and my brother cleaned house on the poker machines, at least a bit longer than they’d intended. I suppose it’s fitting to conclude the trip in a casino. Tomorrow is just a day full of flying, starting at 4:10 AM, and afterward, with the return to Los Angeles and the next big chapter of life beginning, it’s all going to be a big gamble. So, here goes the first ₡olón…
We returned to El Avión for lunch and gorged on enormous quantities of rice before catching a shuttle to San Jose. Though it was an hour shorter than the previous ride, I would have preferred not to get into a shuttle again so soon. I took a nice nap for the first third, and then we hit traffic through most of the towns. We stopped once at a coffee shop high in the clouds, surrounded by steep coffee fields, which are all apparently harvested by hand, then continued the rest of the way. The van pulled into the Holiday Inn Express, where we had our last dinner at the Pirates Bar and Grill in the middle of a casino. The ceviche and nachos were tasty, though I had zero appetite after a day of lounging. I can’t wait to get back to the gym.
We spent the remainder of the evening tooling around in the casino as Mom and my brother cleaned house on the poker machines, at least a bit longer than they’d intended. I suppose it’s fitting to conclude the trip in a casino. Tomorrow is just a day full of flying, starting at 4:10 AM, and afterward, with the return to Los Angeles and the next big chapter of life beginning, it’s all going to be a big gamble. So, here goes the first ₡olón…
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