Costa Rica Part Deux

So when I left off we'd just arrived in Manuel Antonio in our romantic suite! We had a great time there even though the weather was mixed. It didn't rain every day, but when it did rain, it meant business- the good thing was that it didn't last long usually.

We were there for 5 nights but the highlights for me were definitely kayaking in the mangroves and spending the day at Manuel Antonio National Park- we saw monkeys (just like Ross' monkey, Marcel!) and hung out on a really nice beach! Unfortunately, due to some careless sunscreen application I got pretty burnt.

Since I've left Egypt the incidences of me feeling sure I'm going to die (eg "OMG this car is going 200km/hr and one of the wheels just came off" or "Wow, this doctor is injecting me with something and I have no idea what it is..") have gone way down, but during our surfing lesson, that familiar feeling came back! It started out okay...actually Amanda and I really liked our surfing instructor Marco because he was so funny-- we started out on the beach practicing the correct surfing position before we were allowed on the water. He spoke english, but not very well...he began "Now, sohm people like to put their knee on the board....Meeee? I dohn liak that!" And some people he continued "put their elbows on the board... and of course, he also didn't "liak that!" It became a running joke during the holiday when people did things we weren't happy about. In any case, back to the story.. so after our land lesson we finally got our boards to the water... the waves looked pretty big, but I didn't want to seem like a chicken so I marched into the water head on... the fisrt half hour was okay, I managed to stand up a few times but the waves kept getting bigger and bigger, and then, at one point I was lying on the board, paddling, when suddenly Marco jumped on top of me and lay the full length of himself on my back....he then grabbed the sides of the board and flipped both of us underwater so that the board was on top of us- at that moment, the giant wave that I didn't see because I was facing away from it, thundered over us... we both somehow let go of the board and got jostled around a few times under the water, at that point it was hard to tell which was up or down and then I finally popped up- the board was attached to my ankle with a leash so i think that had something to do with it...when he resurfaced, marco looked pretty surprised as well...After that Amanda and I both agreed we'd done enough surfing for the day....

The pics, in order, are: view from our room (at sunset); Amanda picking out some fruit; Slothy the 3-toed sloth that lived in the jungle near our hotel; us kayaking in the mangroves.

All in all, it was a great trip. We saw and did a lot of amazing things. Back to work tomorrow :(

Bye for now,

xoxo C