July 10th: Manuel Antonio!

We woke up determined to have a better day in Costa Rica. Like gameday, pump up song determined. We had “breakfast” (in this movie, the part of “breakfast” will be played by a banana and 2 saltine crackers.) Then we called Alamo car rental in hopes of snagging an unadvertised 4x4 vehicle for 20 days for a decent price. Jen did a superb job of negotiating our price and taking care of a situation that I had already lost my patience for. We then headed to the grocery store and pulled out money. Jen bought some kind of strange juice with squishy jellyfish looking fruit floating around in it. I didnt care for it but she seemed to like it. Alamo graciously sent a van to pick us up and we headed to pick up our new car! When we arrived we met our Suzuki Jimmy who we cleverly named, “Jimmy”.

 Map in hand, we headed in our new compact 4X4 out of San Jose to find Manuel Antonio. We found that driving in Costa Rica isn’t nearly as dangerous or daunting as driving in Europe. On our way we stopped at a bridge over “el rio del cocodrillo”. I had told Jen about this bridge but totally forgotten where it was. I was so excited to show her the river full of crocodiles. Ranging anywhere from 7 to 15 feet long, the dozens of Crocs kicked it on the banks of the river.....waiting for someone to fall in.......or throw some chicken......or maybe a taco. I dont really know. But they seemed to like it there. Jen may have taken a million pictures of the crocodiles- and they were worthy of all of them. 

We bought some delicious pineapple at the store by the river and tried some honey coconut cookies.....and we MUST buy those cookies when we roll back through there. After our crocktastic picture taking adventure we hit the road again. Jen navigated us successfully all the way to our new temporary home. We had a fairly easy, smily, and scenic drive with Jimmy all the way to Manuel Antonio. We checked in to Hotel Mandarina around 4PM and ate at El Avion. I had seen this restaurant the last time I was here and sadly didn’t get to eat there. This time we got one of the best seats in the house. This restaurant is built around an old antique plane. It also boasts a crazy good view of the ocean. We ate some tasty tico chow and headed back tired and full. Solid day. MUCH better day.