after the “tours galore” post, the next day was the journey from monteverde to quepos on the pacific coast side of costa rica. from the “today is the best day ever” post, you can already get a sense of how yucky the day was. i think i left out how rocky and bumpy the roads where going down the mountain. there were a few times where i was bumped out of my seat and holding the oh shit handle bar.

once we made it down, we stopped at a gas station/convenience store. the cost for a liter of petrol was 390 colonnes, roughly 80 cents. we figured it must cost them 2.40 dollars per gallon of gas. that’s quite a lot in this country.

it started raining when we arrived at the crocodile bridge. it is called this cause there are a bunch of crocodiles hanging out underneath the bridge. there is a convenience/souvenir shop next to the bridge that sells crap with crocodiles on it. the crocodiles were huge!! one little bird was being very cautious while walking

and a croc was trying to catch a bird by baiting its nose with bread.

the wind was blowing pretty hard on the bridge, which twisted my umbrella and eventually broke it. oh well. a dollar for an umbrella, can’t expect much from it.

back in the car, we had to cross three one way bridges. it is incredible these things are still standing. they had so much corrosion on it and we went very slowly across. we had to wait an hour to cross one of them. at one point, the driver turned off the car and the belgian stepped out to have a smoke. ugh.

after the hour wait to cross the last bridge, it was only 20 minutes before we were unloading our stuff into our room at the villa romantique. i liked the place. the towels were in placed on our beds in shapes of swans and hearts and the rooms where nice and big with a private bathroom. but you had to pay to use the safe, which was odd. you also had to pay for the a/c. dunno how they regulate that one. they had a pool with a jacuzzi that we all had agreed we would enjoy, but never did.

so, quepos is a small village behind a large mountain that leads to a national park called manual antonio. the road going over the large mountain is very twisty and steep with no sidewalks. it is not advisable to walk up it. there are buses that have a fee of .20 cents to transport you to places on the mountain or to quepos or manual antonio. the mountain has loads of bars, restaurants, resorts, stores, etc. it is the richy part of the area. i had read in the good book (lonely planet) that the mountain and surrounding area has a large gay scene. after the mountainous ride, you arrive in manual antonio that has a big beach and some restaurants and stores. the best beaches are in the national park. more on all of this in the next day post.

anyways, back to the story. we climb into the vans to head up the mountain to a place called the blue monkey to have a group lunch. while dee was checking email, i told john that i was thinking about shortening the trip due to the weather. while we were seated, it was pouring rain and it had been raining every day since we arrived. i didn’t want to spend another week and a half in the rain. we can save money by coming back early and visit costa rica in the dry season. i wasn’t going to take this rain anymore.
before john made an coments, dee returned with some sad news about shiloh. our dog was sick due to stress from the doggy day care. natalie has been a great help in taking care of the dog while we have been away. as a way to keep shiloh from going crazy by herself, we thought dog day care would be fun. turns out it just stressed the crap out of shiloh (no pun intended). it took many many times of john and me saying everything will be fine, shiloh is ok, she is only stressed out to get dee to finally relax. once she did, i told her what i had just told john, and she said she was thinking the same thing before reading about shiloh. she was filled up with rain and had had enough. this brightened dee up and she was excited to being going home to see her daughter (shiloh) and be out of the rain.

after lunch, we take the bus into town to find an internet place. i quickly learned that all the internet places sucked cause of the machines being old and the connection being slow. john somehow found this one place at the edge of town in a shady area that had decent machines and the same connection. oh well. i settled for this. we got the info for the airlines and i wrote some while dee and john went to enjoy some coffee.

upon returning to the hotel, the group was congregating in the open air lobby for group dinner. we weren’t hungry to join for dinner, but we got the name of the place they would be going afterwards for drinks. it is a bar called The Lounge. we read about it in the good book. it claimed two LA women had started it and they knew how to throw a party.

we arrived just before we had to pay the cover. sat down and had some snacks and drinks. the place looked cool being open air and all with a balcony out back overlooking the forest. it was ladys night and they had a special free drink for all the ladies. it was a refreshing fresca with vodka mix. it was horrible, yuck. did they have a stock pile of fresca and well vodka? hmm, how can we unload all this crap that no one drinks and still make some profit? let’s throw a ladys night!

the sound system was all treble and the dj would stop good songs in the middle from playing and would blast the crap out of reggaton which is like a step up from the circus mexican music i heard in monterrey mexico which sucks. of course, they played 80s songs as well, which during the entire stay in costa rica became an oddity. everywhere they played 80s. it was as if everyone got the same 80s mix cd and passed it around.

anyways, dee danced a bit and john and i poised for a imperial beer commercial. after a while, we headed back and went to bed.