Day 3 - Tuesday March 4th

The gang getting ready to hit the water at Manuel Antonio beach. As you can see we are in the shade, the sun is too intense.


I woke up last night at around 12:30am to the sound of a sudden downpour of rain. It seemed like it rained really heavy for about 30 minutes then stopped. I woke up this morning at 6:20am and went for a walk before anyone got up. I walked down the driveway to the main road and the schoolchildren and their mothers were watching as they waited for the city bus. One little girl on the other side of the street was waiting patiently with her hands crossed and a slight smile on her face as a man on my side of the street playfully tossed pebbles at her feet. It was warm outside and humid. There are all kinds of little bugs and flying insects here. We even have a gecko inside our house that lives up in the rafters.
After everyone got up, we headed out to go eat breakfast. As we were going down the driveway, we noticed a woman’s shoe hanging on the fence. It was Jen’s! When we were unloading the SUV the evening before, I had taken 2 of her shoes and one of Amanda’s and put them on the roof of the car and forgot them! About a ¼ of a mile down the road we found Jen’s other shoe laying on the side of the road. Amanda’s shoe has yet to be recovered.
We had breakfast at Café’ Milagro in Manuel Antonio, a wonderful place known for their coffee. On to the beach after that. The beach was more beautiful than any of us had expected. The black sand is so fine and soft, the water is warm and the waves……huge! We decided not to rent a surfboard or boogie board today and instead just bodysurf. We never went to far out because the waves are so powerful and the rip currents are deadly. Thankfully there are lifeguards posted at this beach and they are quick to spot a rip current and tell everyone to move down to a different area.
After our day at the beach we went into town (Quepos) to eat at a little soda (an expensive eatery). Again, great food and large portions for about $20 for the 5 of us! From there we went to the grocery store, Pali. We had a whole grocery cart of food and when we went to leave, the security guard shut the huge steel doors in front of us and would not let us leave. He took the receipt, looked at it and started speaking to us in Spanish. Jen tried her best to understand what he was trying to say to us. We thought he was telling us that we couldn’t leave the store unless we paid some sort of tax or something. Finally after getting someone else who worked at the store who could speak a little English they explained to us that because of what we had bought, we had earned a credit toward our next shopping trip there! They just wanted to make sure that we knew that before we left.
Back at the house, most of us were in bed by 10pm.