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8 Mar 2002 |
You know what? I'm tired. Downright exhausted. "Today was one of the
most perfect days of my life," I had proclaimed
to Karen on the bus back from the beach yesterday--it was
full of sun and surf and fun, but I'm paying for it today with
a headache and lackluster energy. Add to that the oppressive
heat, and a sore brain that has worked overtime operating in Spanish
4-6 hours a day for the past week, and all I want to do is spend a
sloth-like afternoon laying around, thinking of nothing except the ocean breeze whisking away
the heat (which is exactly what I did for a couple hours after class
today).
But last Tuesday was pretty awesome, too, and that's what I feel like
writing about right now--I'll save yesterday's details for another
update.
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Let me quickly bring you to our present location--on Sunday, Karen and
I bid farewell to Kap's place and boarded a bus in San Jose at midday.
The bus left the relatively cool, temperate central valley where San Jose
is located, and contorted it's way through curvy roads that were obviously
not made with a bus
in mind. If you happen to know a bus driver that wants a career filled
with exitement and challenging roads, tell them to head to Costa Rica!
We arrived in the town of Quepos on the west coast, about halfway between
Costa Rica's northern and southern borders, after a three hour ride from San Jose.
We met up with our host mother, Yesenia, and another student, Myriam,
at the bus stop, and have been living with them (and Yesenia's family) while
attending classes at Manuel Antonio, a short bus ride away.
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Well, more on Spanish classes, our host family, beautiful beaches,
incredible sunsets, etc. later--right now I want to talk about how
Karen and I experienced stuff straight out of the Discovery channel in real life!
Last Tuesday, one of our classmates arranged a trip to nearby Parque Nacional
Manuel Antonio. After a dispute with our first guide (his partner had mislead us
on the price by about $5 per person) we quickly found another who offered us the same tour at
a fairer price, and who turned out to be very funny and personable as well as
incredibly knowledgeable about the wildlife in the park.
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The three-toed sloth (top of page), white-faced monkey (above) and anteater (right) give you
a taste of the creatures we saw while in the park. Alas, lighting conditions
and battery problems prevented me from capturing all the wonderful creatures
we saw on film. However, I still got plenty of photos--click here
to see a page with much more photos (including better-quality versions of
the photos you see here). If you have a
cable or DSL modem, this page should load pretty quickly, but it will take
a bit longer if you have a dialup connection. But I assure you, it should only
take a few seconds to download the first photo, and the whole page will take
less than a minute--I think you'll find it worth the wait!
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Love & laughter--
--Scott.
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