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Traveling Central and South America! Part 1: Costa Rica

So I said I would write every week. Not! So recently, I’ve been pretty busy, and the free time I’ve had was spent pretty much doing nothing/watching Netflix/reading. Every night, my family’s been watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix, and we’re on Season 3 currently.

In Costa Rica we stayed in a turquoise house, Casa Turquesa, in the jungle. We stayed near a beach town, Manzanillo, where there are lots of people and vendors selling handmade items.

Our little jungle house!

When we left the San José airport in Costa Rica after our arrival (this was about five weeks ago), we stopped at a soda and we were getting food. Since the man at the counter didn’t speak English, Mom and Dad were making animal sounds to identify what they wanted. The man at the counter was explaining a pork dish in Spanish and since I forgot the word for “pig” in English (when I’m thinking in one language, I really can’t think of other languages, otherwise I’m just confusing myself), so I snorted, trying to explain what “puerco” was in English. So my explanation turned into Mom and Dad trying to order their food by making animal sounds.

We spent six nights in Costa Rica, and as we stayed there, we saw sloths, bats, raccoons, leaf cutter ants, howler monkeys (they sounded more like lions according to Mom), and smaller monkeys.

So our first full day there, after a good night’s rest, we went to Puerto Viejo, and there, we had breakfast at De Gustibus Bakery (at 2 p.m. ????).

After breakfast (or lunch?), we walked around Puerto Viejo, and we saw many things. We stopped at the beach and waded in the ocean a bit, and the water felt amazing on such a hot day!

A beach in Manzanillo!

I noticed how Puerto Viejo had been influenced by America. Many stores and shops in Costa Rica take US dollars, and that there’s a lot of American “food” (Lays Chips, Planters peanuts, Skippy peanut butter, you name it and there’s a 50 percent chance it was there) in the Supermercado we went to later that day. I said that America colonized grocery stores.

Besides finding all that, I found these super cool popsicles that are all natural; they use plastic-free packaging, and they still have some of the natural fruit pieces. I got a Mango one and it had those little stringy mango bits in it (am I making sense?).

The next day, we went to the local beach, Punta Uva after spending a late morning at the house. The water was too dangerous to go swimming for a long time, but Dad and I swam a bit (I think Mom got scared after a while).

Wading in the water at Punta Uva.

At the beach, there were people selling empanadas, pastries, and Argentinian churros. We didn’t end up buying any though.

Later, we headed back to have a relaxing evening at the house. I spent some time doing schoolwork, and think maybe I tried making a blog post.

The next day, I got pretty sick. I had some sort of stomach bug, and I spent the day lounging around the house and getting sick. Pretty much what I did that day was try to hold food down, read, and watch Riverdale (don’t worry I’m not going to give any spoilers).

That night, when I felt better, Mom, Daisy, and I watched Gilmore Girls on my phone.

The next day, we went to the Gandoca Manzanillo Refuge, where we saw monkeys in the trees. We turned back after a while (half an hour?) because the rest of the trail was “dangerously slick and muddy,” as Mom said. It was pretty muddy! Besides that, the trail was very beautiful! We walked back so we could drive to town.

Nice walk, but very muddy!

For dinner, we went to a Caribbean style restaurant called Mr. Maxie’s in Manzanillo. We had Caribbean dishes for dinner and outside, it was raining.

On our last full day in Costa Rica, we drove 45 minutes in the northerly direction (it was Dad driving, but I wish I was behind the wheel personally) to Cahuita National Park. There, we saw sights of bats, monkey families, sloths, raccoons, and leaf-cutter ants! We said it was like we were in a nature documentary. Daisy had her spyglass that I got her for her birthday, and she used it to get a better look of the monkeys.

We waded in the ocean there a bit, but since there was debris and the waves were rough, we didn’t swim for a long time.

Later, we went to the ice cream shop in the town of Cahuita and I got mango sorbet (mango sorbet is one of my favorites), and we walked around Cahuita. It was warm out, yet it felt good. We noticed that there were a lot of stray dogs in Cahuita, and Daisy thought every one of them was cute.

Cahuita!

Later, we headed back to Puerto Viejo and we spent a bit of time at the beach. A man was selling Argentinian churros, and of course, I couldn’t resist. We were all hungry from the day’s adventures, so I got some churros. We waded into the ocean a bit; we couldn’t really go swimming because we had to get to the car soon so we could go back to the house.

That night, we enjoyed our last dinner in Costa Rica and we packed our things for the next day. The next morning, we would have to leave at 5:30 am, since San José was five hours away from the house.

The next morning, we woke up at 4:45 a.m. and we packed up our stuff and went to the car. Dad drove for a while and he got coffee at a soda and he gave me a sip (I didn’t want a whole coffee).

We finally got to the airport after five hours of driving and after getting our stuff done, we got on the plane to Guatemala!

We’re now in Costa Rica again after five weeks, but I’m trying to catch you up here.

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