My first weekend away!

Well, I'm officially a seasoned traveler of Costa Rica...okay, that's a huge exaggeration, but at least I left town this weekend! Two other girls and I took a bus to Manuel Antonio for a weekend of sunshine and partying on the beach. What did we get? Two days of rain. Here's how it went down. We left San Jose at 2:30pm on Friday, thinking that the bus ride would be about two hours. Yeah, try three and a half. By the time we arrived in Quepos, a small beach town, it was pouring rain and we were starving. We found one of the few restaurants we could afford and had dinner (I ate a chicken sandwich again, not too creative, this one). After dinner, we checked into our hostel, Mar y Luna, to change our clothes and clean up a bit. The owner of the hostel was a sweet, little old man who gave us a room with three beds for 10 bucks a night. The room was a bit rough, but clean, and we had our own bathroom. After freshening up, we headed out to Wacky Wandas, a corner bar on our street. As fortune would have it, we met two very nice men, who were both about 30, who proceeded to buy us all of our drinks and our entry into a nightclub down the street. For three girls who didn't bring enough money along, this was quite convenient. Was it a bit strange that two 30-year-old men wanted to hang out with three young girls? Probably! Fortunately, they were perfect gentlemen and even walked us home later that night. We saw them again the next morning, but by that point we had decided that we were going to stick with people our own age for the duration of the trip. We parted ways amicably. After a late breakfast Saturday morning at a cute cafe with amazing coffee, we jumped on a bus to Manuel Antonio to visit the national park. We had to pay $10 to enter into the park, and unfortunately, it wasn't quite what we expected. The day was a bit overcast, so the animals were not very active. We didn't see any monkeys :( but we did see a sloth climbing up a tree, a boa constrictor curled up in a tree above our heads, three different types of lizards (BIG ones), and some beautiful butterflies. The park ended right by the beach, so we spent the next half-hour in the ocean jumping in the waves and being pelted by the afternoon rain storm. Soaked and exhausted, we headed back to our hostel to rest before dinner. Naturally, we headed back to the same, affordable restaurant for dinner. I ordered a chicken burrito and Marie ordered a chicken quesadilla. Interestingly enough, they were identical. We both had chicken with black beans in a tortilla. The only difference was that her's was flat and mine was rolled. Nice. After dinner we walked around town, stopping in a small coffee shop for dessert of pina coladas and tres leches cake. Needless to say, both were amazing (although I swear the lady used half the bottle of alcohol in our drinks. I could barely swallow it). Still tired from our night out before, we retired a bit earlier to our hostel to turn in for the night. We had to wake up early Sunday morning to catch our 8:00 bus back to San Jose, so our adventure was somewhat short lived. There are more stories to tell, but that's all I have time for right now. I need to look over my vocab before running to class. I'll try to write again soon!