saltwatersteve.com/travel

It’s election day back home (don’t worry, we absentee/early voted) but it’s Rainmaker Day for us. Raoul was our guide - we had the place to ourselves. Fresh fruit breakfast. We saw millipedes humping, a fried egg anole (m, who hung from Raoul’s ear and played dead), another anole (f), whip scorpion, eyelash viper, male and female green iguanas at the top of the canopy (males have orange heads), a canopy lizard (rare, with very long tail - member of anole family), big gecko, brown Jesus Christ basilisk lizard (who ran across the water), helmeted iguana (who was hanging on a rope and clung to my hand), a huge click beetle (iridescent mustard yellow), young poison dart frog, huge blue morpho butterflies, red cup mushrooms. Many waterfalls, the leaves decomposing into leaf-skeletons, a machaca (fish related to piranha) trying to swim up some rapids. We walked all 6 canopy suspension bridges. We left the hotel at 7:30 and were back at 1. $65 / person including transportation and 2 meals.

Took what was supposed to be a short nap, got up at 3:30, PN Manuel antonio closes at 4 so we decided to go tomorrow morning. We checked out the gift shop for a bit and decided that we’d drive to the town of Manuel Antonio (MA) for dinner. Saw a couple people surfing on both surfboards and kayaks. The bay here is beautiful, there are a few rocks offshore big enough to be islands, so we decided to rent a 2 seater kayak and paddle out around two of them. It was very relaxing, after we got past the break of course. We tried unsuccessfully to catch a couple waves on our way back in, then we caught the big kahuna, which gave us some speed, then rolled us. My paddle rope immediately broke, Meghan got tangled in hers a bit, but we were ok. It took a bit of creativity and acrobatics to get changed and wash the sand off our feet w/o stepping foot on the urine-soaked floor of the community bano in MA. We then stopped at La Cantina for some nachos and pollo kabobs, checked on the election results on CNN, and listened to live music from The Jungle Boys, a mix of covers (and maybe some originals) ranging from mariachi to reggae.