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On Friday, Sept. 16th, we went to the beach! It was so great! We left in the morning and it took about two and a half hours to get to Manuel Antonio. There we stayed in a nice hostel. From the hostel it's just one long road that winds down the hill and ends at the beach. A bus makes rounds from the beach to the nearest town everyday so we would just sit at the bus stop right outside of our hostel and take the less than 5 minute ride down to the beach. On Friday it rained a lot so we just walked up and down the road exploring shops and restaurants. We went to this awesome cafe and had great coffee from beans that they roast themselves there. I had decaf and it was heavenly! I don't find it often down here:( Then, Saturday we woke up early and went down to the beach. When you get off the bus, you can either walk straight to the public beach or walk to the left and go down the road to the entrance of the national park. It's only $10 a day to enter the national park. It's a very nice rainforest with trails to walk all through it. Waiting at the entrance of the park were tour guides who were desperately trying to give us a tour of the park but we decided it was too expensive. So, we entered the park hoping my regular eyes and Patrick's eagle scout eyes would be good enough to spot some interesting wildlife! Five minutes into our walk, don't ya know Patrick spots a sloth! They are neat animals and they really do move very slowly. Their long fingers are cool to look at. They sit high up in the trees and eat. We continued our walk and saw lots of neat things. There were lots of lizards, tree crabs, hummingbirds, and fire ants. Later on, I spotted a sloth too! We spent about five hours hiking through the park. One trail went up to this awesome lookout above a clif. You could see the ocean and it was beautiful. Then, there were three different beaches in the park. The first one we went to was quiet and secluded with lots of rocks and pebbles. The second one was very crowded, with people and animals! There were so many monkeys and racoons who were sneaky and stealthy! The monkeys would literally steal anything they could get their hands on so you had to strap your stuff to your backpack and have someone guard it at all times. We saw a monkey run down out of the tree, unzip a backpack, take some food and drinks, and run back up into the tree to enjoy it. When they are done, they just drop whatever they have out of the tree so you have to watch out for falling empty juiceboxes and such! :) From there, we took a really nice trail over to the next beach. On the trail, we found a group of monkeys. One snarled at Patrick and another one came two feet from me! We also saw this weird rodent. It was the size of a big rabbit and it had rat ears but no tail. Then we spent the rest of the weekend exploring the mangroves on the beach and some other nice restaurants. It was so nice to have a long weekend break and get out in the sun and in the waves! We'd love to go back again someday!
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