Surf Contest

Every Saturday night from 4 to 6 there is a surfing contest at the next town--the beach there is called Hermosa Beach.  Chuck and Sharon, Gail and I, and our friends from Tennessee, Jim and Alena, decided to see what it was like.

The Group

  The name of the bar/restaurant is the Backyard.

The food was excellent.  We had some of the best fish fingers ever. They also had a BBQ going.

An easy way to figure how much something costs in US dollars is to just multiply the Colones price times two.  So here, the Kabobs would cost $3 each and two for $5.40, hamburgers are $7 and a hot dog is $4.  They had a full menu in addition to the BBQ.
We got there a little early and spent the time talking and watching the people.  Most everyone there was younger than us.  The ladies liked our waiter..

Eye Candy For The Gals

 Antonio Banderas was mentioned a few times.  There was lots for us guys to look at also..           

Eye Candy 2

Eye Candy 3

The bar and the beach began to fill up.

The Crowd Gathered.

The sun was hot so there was lots of shade.

Simple Shade

Better Shade

One of the contestants had to do a some special preparation.

The contest soon started and the surfers did a very good job.

Surfers

Surfers 2

After the surfing we watched the sunset.

Surfing Sunset

They were preparing for an evening of live music but we had a very long day and decided to make it an early evening.  

We will definitely go back.

Manuel Antonio cont.

As we continued our journey through the park, we began to see white faced monkeys and raccoons.

White faced monkeys.

According to our guide, Nicholas, this meant we were getting close to the beach.  These clever little scavengers would pilfer your belongings looking for food if you left anything unattended.
As Sharon points out, we were right here--

You are here.

 The beach was beautiful so we spent a little time relaxing before continuing on our trek.

One of the Manuel Antonio Beaches

Parasailing

After relaxing at the beach we finished our adventure through the park and headed home.  We were all pretty hot and it was definitely "Miller Time".  We stopped at this restaurant that was made from an old WWII cargo plane.

The bar was in the fuselage.

And you could sit in the cockpit.

A few essential pieces missing

The restaurant was on two levels with a dumb waiter delivering food from the kitchen.

All of this with a beautiful view of the ocean.

After having our beer and a snack we hurried home in order to get there in time to see the sunset.

Manuel Antonio Parque Nacional

Manuel Antonio National Park is a tropical forest that is about 140 acres consisting of land, mangrove swamp, and ocean.  

On the trip there with Chuck and Sharon, about fifty miles, we passed miles and miles of palm trees... 

  that were obviously planted in rows.

We learned they harvest the fruit to make palm oil.  This is apparently a very lucrative crop. 

All of the animals and plants in the park are protected.  It cost $6 to park the car, $10 per person to get into the park, and $80 for a guide. Nicholas, our Guide, was extremely knowledgeable and could answer any question.  He carried a telescope on a tripod through which we could see, and photograph, the various species of animals.  

Nicholas--Our Guide

For example, this is a sloth with her baby seen through the telescope.  You can see the babies head on the left side of the picture.

We saw lots and lots of unique animals and flowers.  This is a white frog.

Here is a green Iguana.  The green Iguanas are vegetarian as compared to the black ones that eat just about anything.

Green Iguana

Black Iguana

This is a multi-colored crab.

Crab

If you look closely, you can this three toed sloth with her baby.

Mama Sloth.

It was a long walk with many, many animals and plants along the way.

Volcan Poas going home

We left the Poas volcano and started our journey home.  The top of the volcano is at a little over 8000 feet above sea level.  While still in the upper elevation we saw coffee plantations.

Coffee Fields

We also saw large fields of strawberries and ferns.   These were all covered with plastic to presumably keep out the birds and the hot sun.

Strawberries

You could see all of the valley below.

Valoc Paos Valley

As we continued to descend we encountered farm country and quite a few cows--even on the roads.

We ultimately left farm country and entered town.  The towns are very economically challenged.

Being an old telephone person I naturally noticed the wiring.

The towns had many of the stores with which we are familiar and a lot of fast food restaurants.

The price for this Wendy's box meal is approximately $7.50 US.

As we finished our trip home one of the things that seemed to fascinate us all were the fences along the road.  Instead of the expense of buying fence posts, they take branches off the trees, stick them in the ground and they grow--economical and effective.
(The main problem was Sharon trying to get a picture of them as we were driving by.)

Growing Fence Posts

We made it home--it was a good day.