Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Costa Rica - Quepos & Manuel Antonio
My final stop in my brief circuit of Costa Rica was at another beach spot. I’d taken the high speed boat that rockets across from the beach at Montezuma to a beach a few km north of Jaco. We encountered a school of dolphins half way across. 
From there I continued south to Quepos where I tried a night at the Wide-Mouth Frog Backpackers, it gets a rave in our Costa Rica book so I thought I’d check it out. It’s good!
The Wide-Mouth Frog Backpacker did indeed have a dog that was truly 'enorme'
From Quepos a bus service shuttles north a few km to Manuel Antonio and its popular little national park. I wasn’t so enthusiastic about the park (it could do with some love and care) or the resort huddling up to the park entrance, but never mind I’d enjoyed my Costa Rican travels. I did see plenty of wildlife in the park including lots of lizards (one really big one), agouti (think of a rabbit-size tail-less rat) and white-faced capuchin (some of them amazingly nonchalant about my presence only cm away from them).
On my way back to Quepos I stopped for a look at El Avion Bar. It features a Fairchild C123 military cargo aircraft (think a smaller, older, twin-engined Hercules), the sister aircraft to one of Ronald Reagan/Oliver North’s Iran Contra aircraft which got shot down over Nicaragua in 1986. One of the crew – Eugene Hasenfus – parachuted out (the flight crew were killed) and his capture by the Nicaraguans blew the cover on the messy affair. I have a beer to note this reminder, once again, that one man’s freedom fighters (in this case Mr Reagan’s) are another country’s terrorists.
Once while Travelling: The Lonely Planet Story