Last ISA Excursion: Manuel Antonio

Oct. 16-18th our ISA group took our last excursion to Manuel Antonio, a beach town/protected national forest on the west coast about 2 hours south of Jaco.  It's the smallest national park but has the most annual visitors--200,000.  Learned that in my environmental awareness class ;)  We arrived Fri. night and walked to El Avion, a restaurant made out of a crashed airplane.  Pretty sweet huh?  It was a nice dinner...more expensive than we've been used to.  Usually we look for a $2 meal so when we see a dish that costs $12, we freak out.  That night we were so tired we just laid back in the hotel and talked until we started falling asleep.  

Saturday we walked as a group along the beach, then inland into the national park, which led us out to the beach inside the park.  I started swimming with Chris and Kacia to some rocks.  Some other people came over after and we just played in the tide pools for a bit.  After the swim back from the rocks we laid on the beach, bodysurfed the waves, and played marco polo haha (way harder in the ocean, duh).  

Photo Cred: Nathaniel Polta

They warned us about animals stealing our bags of food, or just bags in general thinking there will be food in them.  Surely enough, Kevin's bag of food gets stolen by a raccoon!  While we were on the rocks, a raccoon snuck up and grabbed his bag.  Lindsey and Brandon saw the lil rascal take it and tried chasing after him but he was too fast!  Haha.  Luckily my food wasn't stolen and I got to see monkeys, iguanas, a sloth, and tons of hermit crabs!

Kacia, Nate, Lindsey, Natalie, Lanna, Kevin, Quinn, and I hiked the loop that goes around the small peninsula.  It had a few lookouts we stopped at to enjoy the view.

The hike ended at a small cove on the same side as the first beach we were at. Helloooo Brittany gets hurt #3.  Or should I say, I thought I was going to die #1.  I put my stuff down and see Quinn, Kevin, and Lindsey walking along rocks that lead to a higher rock farther out into the water.  One fairly big wave had come in while I was walking out there.  Then right when I got to the edge next to Quinn, a gigantic wave comes up and smacks me off the rock, crashing down and dragging me across the rocks and finally to the shore.  I was scared for my life.  Sorry, Mom.  Lindsey was the smart one and ran away as the wave was coming.  I walked away with scrapes along my back, arms, and hand, and an enormous bruise on my right thigh.  Nate captured the moment. 

That night we went to dinner in town at a small Italian restaurant run by one Italian man.  His gelato was to die for.  I had a flavor called Beso (that's kiss in espanol).  It was a kiss from heaven :)  After dinner we went upstairs to a restaurant/bar that some of the ISA kids were already eating at. They had lounge chairs and music so we just hung out and danced some salsa for a bit.  Kevin and Michael set up a bonfire for all of us so we hung out at the beach roasting marshmallows and talking.  Before we went out to the bonfire a dog came into our hotel room.  We fed her peanut butter and gave her some water then she followed us to the bonfire and back to our hotel room later that night.  She ended up sleeping on our floor.  We named her Ella :)  

Sunday morning we woke up to pouring rain but this turned out to be my favorite day.  Natalie and I put on our bathing suits after breakfast and ran out to the beach.  We jumped into the SUPER warm water then ran along the beach chasing the tide in and out.  It was very romantic ;)  When we got to the end of the strip we laid in the wet sand, kicked our feet up and down into the mud and splattered it onto each other.  I felt like I was 6 years old.  As we ran back, a couple of the tico surf instructors stopped us and we talked to them for a while.  We also danced salsa in the rain with them...is my life a movie or what?  And one guy said he wrote reggae music and started flowing a song about me, but y'all know I'm not a sucker for thatttt. It was a really good song though ;)  Kacia, Quinn, and Nate were running toward us so we ran back with them to the beach in front of our hotel.  Natalie and I played baseball with a piece of wood and a coconut.  Just us two, so it was easy to get each other out.  I got over it pretty quickly so I swam in the ocean during the time we had left.  Manuel Antonio was awesome.  Now I understand why it gets the most visitors.  

I just got home from Montezuma today.  This one's a winner too :)