Manuel Antonio Park

Day 95, Oct 5, 2013

No rain so we walked to the park, and joined in on a park guide for $6.

Did see lots of animals that you would normally not see but the guide picks them out for you and he sets-up his telescope so that you get a real good close-up look at it, very cool.

 

 

Can you spot the lizard.

 

 

 

 

 

Chipotle Monkeys.

 

 

After the tour you can take some of the trails to discover on your own, or stay on the beach.

The guide gives you a warning though that the return to the nearest exit will be flooded within the next hour should you decide to stay, so we thought lets do the trail with the lookout's in it and we should be able to get out on time.

We did head back to the exit within the hour but it was flooded anyway (the guide lied?).

The choice was walk back and all the way around for 1hr to get to the other exit or take the plunge through waist hi waters.

For me the choice was simple, go plunge, but Wei did not want to get the electronic stuff wet and started to go back, on the way back he decided to look at the plunge just one more time and did see some others coming across and thought that's not to bad after all and followed a bit later.

Tomorrow heading to Panama, wish us luck.

 

Manuel Antonio

Day 94, Oct 4, 2013,  266km

Another rainy day with more landslides and swelling rivers. After looking at the slick road to Monteverde we decided not to chance it in the poring rain and headed towards Quepos and Manuel Antonio with the National Park that has the same name.

Here we found lodging at the Manuel Antonio Backpackers for $12 US including breakfast, and it is within walking distance to the park.

Will stay an extra day to go see the park, if it isn’t raining.

 At the Parks lookout.

Lake Arenal

Day 93, Oct 3, 2013, 221km

After being treated like family for the last 3 days we had to say goodbye to Dan and Nancy. This has been a real treat for some travelling vagabonds and we can not say enough good things about them. Early this morning we first had a wonderful breakfast at the CocoNutz and then Dan and Nancy did ride part of the way along with us to say farewell. They will stay in our memories with heartfelt gratitude, and we wish them the very best of luck in all there future endeavours, because Dan isn’t done yet.

Today we headed towards the Arenal Volcano and we almost made it. The rain from the last few days has caused some extreme landslides along the mountainous roads, We made it past a few before Wei tried a new horizontal way on one. We had come through a mud slide when Wei gave a bit to much gas and down he went, luckily nothing broke. At about 20 km before the Arenal Park the road was closed due to a massive slide that had just happened a few hours before we arrived. We feel very lucky that we were not in there when it happened, and if you think that we are upset about not getting there you would be wrong. Remember the rule that there is always a reason for these things to happen when they do, our destiny lies somewhere else.

 

Wei seeing if his bike would go faster horizontally.

 

 

 

Lake Arenal shot, but after looking I see a man in the Cloud? Someone watching over us; maybe.

 

Marino Las Baulas (not)

Day 92, Oct 2, 2013, 174km

Last night we had a great dinner with Dan and Nancy and this was our treat to them for all there kindness. After dinner we had a fun time that ended in shooting beer pong, I need not say more.

Yesterday while cruising around town I finally was able to find some Motul 5100 10w40 synthetic for an oil change, it's been 20,000 km's since the last one and this would be a good time to change it. I know some of you will say that's to long but it was only 2 month's ago, so I wasn't worried about it.

So for today we decided to go see the Leatherback Turtles at Marino Las Baulas, they are supposed to be coming to shore to lay there eggs around this time of the year and it would have been nice to catch while we are here. But on our way there the rain started and we thought this is just one of those short lived ones like most of the time, right. The closer we got the heavier it started coming down and to the point where it became torrential. The road we were on at first had some water coming across and that's usual around here, but the further up we went the worse it did get, by now it was like a river coming across and you could see it eating away on the side of the road. That's not enough to turn us around are you kidding; ha, ha we laugh at this, so onward and let the fun begin, that is until we encountered some trees coming across the road in the now 6 to 10 inch deep water; okay now I think we should head back while we still can, and we did, totally drenched of course. The Turtles will just have to wait for some other time I guess, this was not meant to be for now.

 

 

 

Wei, Me, Dan, Nancy

 

Playa del Coco, CocoNutz

Day 90, Sep, 30, 2013, 159km

After 2 hrs at the border we finally crossed into Costa Rica, which is not bad considering the stories we have heard.

Wei was able to find another great detailed border crossing report that you can find on this link: http://heyivegotanidea.wordpress.com/nicaragua-costa-rica/

I'll need to backtrack a little on this following story so that you have some background info. When we crossed the border from Mexico into Belize a couple of days back we did meet Dan and Nancy from Wisconsin riding on a Harley with a trailer attached, as usual we chatted a bit and shared experiences from border crossings, and which roads was best to ride. We also fond out that he was now living in Playa del Coco, Costa Rica. Dan asked if we were heading that way to come down to the CocoNutz Sports Bar and Eatery in town because he is the owner of this place and we could hang out a bit.

 

So yesterday we finally headed to Playa del Coco and was greeted by Dan and Nancy with a heartfelt welcome. After some catching up of how thing did go for them and us, Dan asked what we were planning to do, and I said we just need to crash somewhere and was wondering about local places, without a blink of an eye Dan invites us to stay at there place and WOW what a great place this is. After swimming in the pool we had beer with pizza and some great company to share it with. Dan and Nancy are some of the nicest people that you could ever meet and I feel blessed to have encounter them. Dan is an ex-vet and was declared dead 7 times and through some miracle he came back every time, according to Dan this was because his destiny was not yet fulfilled, I think he's right.

 

Day 91, Oct 1, 2013

 

Today’s  morning view; life does not get any better then this.

 

Had a nice rest day and enjoyed Playa del Coco today.

 

Tonight's sunset from paradise.