After watching the beautiful sky the night before I was set on waking up before the sunrise and being on the rock that overlooked the ocean by where we had seen the toucans the other day. The alarm went off at 5:30, but by that time the sun was basically already up. I got up and went outside and the sound of birds surrounded me, there were so many and they were everywhere. But with every couple of minutes that passed they became quieter and quieter. I went back to the hotel and Mark and my father were ready at this point, and we got into the car and drove down the road to the trail that we walked the other day and saw the 4 spider monkeys. We didn’t see much though sadly, but the walk was still nice; I think the most interesting thing spotted was a humming bird, but it was too far away to really tell. We went back to the point across the river and walked to the point, but decided to do some further exploring into the jungle. After reaching as far as the trail would let us, we headed back. We got in the car and decided to drive to the two cities over after Puerto Viejo to get some gas, as there wasn’t a gas station anywhere near us. After setting off, we saw the car ahead of us suddenly stop, and there were three girls on the side of the road looking at something. Upon inspection we saw that there was a three toed sloth crawling across the road, its back end had some fecal matter stuck to it (the only reason a sloth comes down from its tree every 3 days is to take a dump) and eventually it made it across and began to climb a tree. It looked back at us and it had a big goofy smile on its face, but we failed at getting any pictures of this. On our drive back we were a bit hungry, and pulled over at a little city and found the, what seemed to be, only open restaurant. We went in and it took quite a while until we got served and the guy working there seemed to be completely clueless, and he kept proving it to us over and over again. Mark got French toast, Jim got an omelet, and I got rice and beans with chicken. He forgot who ordered what, and then after the edible (edible being the only word I could use to describe it) meal he forgot what we ordered to ring us up, and had much difficulty adding up the three meals. Whatever, another location that won’t be revisited, to say the least.
We got back to Puerto Viejo and visited the unenthusiastic French woman again, and she showed us the one house which was just the downstairs of a two story house, with not much of a backyard, it smelled funny, and the shower was outside. It was a good option considering what we had seen thus far though. But we decided we weren’t done and went to the other realtor right down the road, and the man there remembered my dad from two years ago, a much nicer greeting. He told us he had a nice two bedroom house for rent, so we drove down the road to check it out. My dad was basically instantly sold. The woman there was very nice, and she said that her and her father had built the house themselves some time ago. It was up on a hill, had an awesome backyard, and the house was pretty great itself. We ran down to the ATM, got out some money, and came back to give it to her to seal the deal. When we came back she was on the phone with somebody else who was trying to rent the house, and she said something along the lines of, “Oh I’m sorry, the house is rented already” and hung up. We then went back towards Manzinillo and dropped off some laundry at a woman’s house that had a sign up to do laundry. We dropped Mark off at home as his stomach had been hurting him all day; he was laying down in the back of the car during most of the trip. We went down the street to the restaurant that had the massive plates of food and celebrated the successful house finding with some Imperals, and we ordered some civiche, which was made with bass, octopus, and probably a couple of other things. I had only tried civiche once earlier in the trip and it was pretty bad, but my father wanted to order it again to show me that it was actually pretty good, and that it was! After that we went back to Puerto Viejo to use the internet café once again, and then headed back to Manzanillo to drop Mark off again. We went to the restaurant to try to take on that massive plate of food. Some of the things were a little overcooked, especially the shrimp, but it was still a pretty good feast. Shrimp, lobster, crab, mussels, potatoes, and a bit more, good stuff. After that we talked with a couple of locals, and went home to retire, but decided to go crash in the hammocks across the street.
kjs
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