oh, mexico, you've ruined me with your delicious tequila and squirt concoction

and i hate the beach. i really do. but imagine no underwater shells or rocks to walk across, no jellyfish or seaweed to sting and/or get wrappr around you, no garbage other than driftwood and coconuts, and a smooth sandy slope into clear, warm water. the jersey shore is about as nice as karl rove's soul compared to this. seriously, my previous favorite beach was on a greek island in the ionian sea. i'm telling you, this is a seriously high-class beach experience.

a fairchild c-123, to be exact. it was once used by the united states government to ship arms and other goods to a revolutionary force in nicaragua called the contras. ever heard of the iran-contra affair? anyway, when the whole thing blew up because this c-123's sister ship was shot down in nicaragua and its CIA crewmember eugene hasenfus was captured by the sandanistas, the u.s. abandoned the one that now lives on the stretch of road between here and quepos in the airport at costa rica's capital, san jose. several years ago it was bought for $3000 and shipped here in pieces (some of which were too wide to come by road because of how narrow the busted-ass train bridges i mentioned earlier are - incidentally, those busted-ass bridges were erected by the chicquita banana company, also mentioned earlier) and now it serves as a restaurant and bar called el avion.

of course, this whole story might be more interesting if i actually had a picture of el avion, but i don't (so click on the link). i can tell you that the food there is pretty good and that drinking an imperial while sitting inside an old long-abandoned army cargo plane once involved in a secret scandal, perched on a mountain in a jungle and beach paradise is a pretty cool damn experience, in a "Lost" tv show kind of way.

so the nearest town is called quepos, and the national park you can see in the distance is manuel antonio. i'm not sure where exactly we were at this point, or where the hotel was located, but i can tell you that the entire stretch between the two is either occupied by spectacularly gorgeous beaches like this one, or row after row and column after column of resort hotels. some of which are extremely nice in their own right.

was our favorite. even the banshee screeches of the scary american tourist woman didn't begin to rouse him. which bring me to another point: don't scream near the monkeys. even though they don't really care.

sleeping, and lounging

(america's, that is) whose heart was really in the right place, even if her tone, demeanor and appearance were unforgivably far off, kept screaming at these costa rican boys to "DON'T TOUCH THE MONKEYS!!!" and "VAMOOSE!!!"

justifiably not at all sure they had to recognize the authority of a hideous three hundred pound foreign woman in a ghastly and garishly colored bathing suit, fiercely clutching k-mart snorkeling gear and screaming complete nonsense in their general direction, they pretty much kept doing whatever they wanted to. honestly, i would have been 100% on the american woman's side if she weren't such an obscene ass, and if i didn't hear her completely undermine all of her own credibility by later commending other tourists for giving the moneys healthy food (their lunch). honestly, they monkeys didn't seem to give a rat's ass either way. probably because they were so full on cheetos or whatever their "protector" had just been feeding them.
do go to costa rica to see monkeys, but DON'T feed them.

...haha, i just said "see monkeys"

says "don't feed the monkeys." nothing says anything about touching them.

that they use all of the time as salutations and best wishes: "pura vida" (pure life) and "tranquilo" (essentially, take it easy). these monkeys were definitely costa ricans.

that's monkey milk. mmmmmm, monkey milk.

we didn't realize it at first. they are almost the same size, after all.

this one was our favorite, because he couldn't be bothered.

it was the rainy season, after all. i almost died once or twice, and my sneakers didn't make it back to america after this hike, so i have no idea how leslie did it in those flip flops.

hang in the trees here.

they are primarily bird sanctuaries

impersonating the incredible melting man. seriously, i'm not sure i've ever shed so much sweat so quickly.

it was a steep, humid and extremely hot climb. here, we were looking out on the pacific through a break in the trees on the side of the path.

looking back towards the mainland

this one is so empty because it's located inside the park

that's the peninsula pictured earlier, up close. it's surprisingly large when you are hiking around inside it.

this little (although not so very little, really) guy was near the entrance to the park.

that peninsula contains the bulk of the natural park named manuel antonio which, in addition to the pristine beaches here, accounts for all of the tourist build up. this view is from hotel la mariposa, which was among the first resorts built here, which means they grabbed the best spot for awesome views.

we weren't really planning on staying here, but after arriving with no reservations and driving around looking for a place we weren't meeting with much success finding digs that were available, affordable and as wonderful as we had envisioned, so we decided to stop by and check it out. at least that way we'd "see" it, right? and check it off the list. once we saw it, we just had to stay.

hotel la mariposa is listed in the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die

i've never stayed at a hotel that gave me a private yard with a view like this before.

murderous and refined

after a minor complaint and a major upgrade, we got this room. it was very cool in a gigantic miami chic kind of way. but we found the world's largest spider carcass in the shower (and in the tumult of disposing of it, managed to completely forget to take a picture of it, but according to my screen resolution, it was about this |----------------------------------------------------| big, in a desiccated fetal position, being eaten by ants). Oh, there was also a nearly dead cricket and two live geckos, one of whom we rescued, the other of whom was savagely eviscerated when I opened the sliding door at the entrance to the room shortly after arriving.

...so, as you might be able to imagine, our introduction to this otherwise awesome room was sort of emotionally trying.