March 12, 2000 - Sunday

We got up early this morning and had breakfast consisted of fresh fruit Rudi got from the local market. We packed up Gilberto's car and headed down to Manuel Antonio, which is on the Pacific Coast. We made a pit stop at Jaco, a surfer town where the gringos go surfing and had lunch there at a nice small open seaside restaurant. I had the good old heart of palm salad with papaya juice in milk and fried rice with shrimp. After a brief encounter with the law enforcement, we reached our destination and quickly unpacked and headed down to the beach. Dave & Rudi stayed around the hotel because they're meeting up with their builder for dinner. The beach was nice but the surf was a bit rough.

We stayed until the tide threatened to cut us off from the path that we took to get there and watched the waves rolled in and the sunset. Surfers came down to ride the bigger waves from the high tide. We headed back to the hotel for a shower and went out to dinner after that at Barbara Roja. Before we did that, we met up with Dave & Rudi and their builder outside of the hotel and they took us to a huge mansion that the builder is building for some rich dude in New York City. This place is huge with great Spanish style exterior and unbelievable views of the Pacific Ocean.

At Barbara Roja, I had shrimp and fish with colorful rice and beans and salad. It was a little tasteless though but sufficient for the evening. The night ended a little early as we met up with Dave & Rudi at the poolside and chatted under the warm tropical night. The only significant wild life I saw on the grounds was a small tree frog that was resting on a left underneath a path light.