Friday June 23rd 2006: I slept very soundly with the help of a whirring AC unit and under my covers in the arctic temperatures in the middle of the tropical rainforest. The glass door was all steamed up so it was hard to see what it was like outside, but I was guessing another hot, muggy day. At 5:30am I was up and about, and decided to give the grounds a wander, they have a lot of little pathways and one that is supposed to go down to the beach. The landscaping at this place is so incredible, I thought it would be a great time to get out and see if there were any cool fauna out and about for some breakfast. While I found some of the paths around the grounds, I didn't see anything too much but bumped into J&C at 6:30am on their way to breakfast and decided to join them. The breakfast spread is as lush as the rest of the hotel here, and like the rest of this trip, I ate. We had a nice intellectual conversation about the spanish inquisition and colonial conquest before a quick jaunt back to the rooms and our departure to Manuel Antonio National Park. On our way out to the geriwagon, Marcos found one of the hotel men carrying out a boa constrictor who was found in a broom closet that morning. and I snapped a shot of him holding it with Bert.
We had to walk across a little bit of water to get to the national park.
Manuel Antonio is a postcard. It's amazing. We had the spotting scope out and while we stayed under the canopy, it was just as hot and muggy as the previous days. We walked into the heart of the park along a beach pathway and all over the place are Jesus Basilisks like crazy- they're named Jesus Basilisks because they're lizards (hence the basilisk) and they have this funny way of running really fast over the surface of shallow water with their webbed feet (hence the Jesus). They're cool. We also spotted more black iguana, a pale billed woodpecker, a cool boa constrictor laying in a tree, and more 3 toed sloths, there were these crabs known as purple mouthless crabs just covering the ground running in and out of their holes.
The beach at this early hour was blissfully light on human traffic, and Marcos picked up the pace on the walk, I think realizing we had a lot of ground to cover to make it back on time, and for those who wanted to get to the beach and just be at the beach instead of hiking around or looking at birds and wildlife (for a natural history tour, most everybody except J&C&I were not there to see flora and fauna). Below: the Jesus Basilisk and this black iguana, sunning himself.
We got to the beach area where most of the women deposited themselves for the day, while Marcos offered the rest of us a "strenuous" 1 mile hike up the hill to a very pretty view. Marcos, J&C&I, as well as Gerry and Tom and Tommy elected to go on the hike. It wasn't nearly "strenuous," but the view at the top was really lovely. On the way we saw more sloths, tons and tons and tons of crabs, and at the top the view was lovely.
The view from the top:
We walked back down to the beach and I got there ahead of everybody else with J&C to find the girls making a sandcastle. I was absolutely drenched with sweat so I stepped into the ocean which was moderately refreshing but too paranoid of sharks to go in past wave breaking point. Then we waited for everybody else to finish the hike back down, which was quite some time on the beach. I busied myself making the sandcastle with Tom and the girls for 15 minutes or so before starting the 1 mile (it had to be more like 2!) out of the park back to the wagon. I was just ready to go and kind of sick of waiting for everybody else. I walked with Charlene since we left John at the top of the hike with the view and went back down and out without him. My feet were killing me: huge blisters on the heels, and I was so sick of being hot and drenched with sweat that I just wanted to get back to the wagon in the AC to dry off and cool off. We passed over a few little streams here and there on the very wooded trail back to the wagon. Charlene and I were the first to get back to the wagon, but we got good seats and were able to cool off in the mean time.
We stopped for lunch at a place I describe as "forgettable" and it must have been because I have absolutely no recollection of the meal whatsoever as I write this website in 2008. I say it was very americanized, and I had a mahi-mahi "hamburger" before getting back to the hotel for a free afternoon. It started raining on the way out and got heavier for the rest of the afternoon. By 3pm I was back at the hotel where I showered, wrote David a long email at the internet station, then back to the room in the (now heavy) rain after having a beer in the open air restaurant area to enjoy the architecture. Love this place. I got a nice spot under this stained glass and sipped my beer for a little while.
After
I finished, I headed back to my room, went out onto the private covered patio
and wrote into the journal in the heat and rain, listening to a pack of squirrel
monkeys calling in the trees all around me as I wrote. I had a quiet night in,
packed up my things carefully which is now a bit of a strategic act since I
had little room to begin with, and now with the very few things I've bought
on this trip (really just my mask) it does take up a lot of space.
I watched a bit of tv, listened to the rainfall and fell asleep really early for a very restful night. Sigh. I'll be sorry to leave the Parador, but not the heat tomorrow.