CHAOS IN MANUEL ANTONIO

After booking a shuttle from Puerto Viejo to Manuel Antonio I arrived at the Selina hostel after 13 long hours.
The shuttle was overpriced with 130$ and stopped at 4 silly huge souvenir shops where we had to stay for 20 minutes each.
The cheaper alternative would have been a rocky public bus from Puerto Viejo to Limon, then Limon to San Jose, then San Jose to Manuel Antonio probably taking 4 hours longer without seats or air con guaranteed.

Since I’m carrying around 3 bags of “hand luggage” and have been sweating like a waterfall in the burning 40 degrees here, I decided to pay for the shuttle that brings me door to door.
Goodbye budget 👋

When I arrived in Manuel Antonio I got a text from a friend who lives there picking me up with his quad. We chilled a bit at his place and hung out.

Next morning was turtle day!
I was excited when I woke up and ready to go. Packed my bag, ordered some breakfast and ready I was. When suddenly I found an editing tool that lets me edit my videos. Nice one!
Fully merged into this one and then found out how badly I’m running out of time.

No no no.

Clicked on my app, opened Uber - one car.
One car around.
That one car was 5 minutes away.
10 minutes away.
5 minutes away.
This one Uber was not coming.

I messed up.
Later that day my friend told me it’s literally one guy! Sometimes he arrives as says it’s too cheap he can’t drive and charges more money. 😆

Alright new plan: heading to Manuel Antonio national park. This will be easy: I go there (don’t need a tour!) walk around and head to the beach in there. Been there 2 years ago and it’s beautiful! Packed with wildlife, and ant eaters, butterflies, colourful poisonous frogs that hop around you, and sloths!!

So well, excited about that (who needs turtles anyways!) I arrive at the gate to be told it’s booked out.

“Booked out? It’s just me. One tiny person in a huuuuge park. Let me in!”

No chance. Apparently you have to book online in order to get a time slot. Should have know, but just have forgotten withing 2 years. Cheers to my outstanding memory 👏

Instead I spend the day at my friends work, headed to the beach and chilled in his room.

Back at the hostel I ended up in a Samba dance lesson. “Why not?” I thought.
“Hell no” my ADHD ass replied. There was not a single chance I could remember these steps. They weren’t even that hart to remember, but once we needed to turn around while maintaining the steps in a f*** circle it was game over for me.

New try with the turtles tomorrow I promised myself. This time I’d head there extra early.

Ready for bed I went to my dorm and found out both my pillow and my blanket were missing. Went up to the reception for a new pillow and walked back down.
Didn’t the dude below my had a blanked wall around his bed?!

I got there shining the light of my phone camera in there. There he was: fat ass dude from India, big belly, white shirt half pulled up, snoring with an open mouth ON MY PILLOW!!
Fucking idiot. I had all my stuff on these things he just pulled the blanked out. He knew it was mine.

I pulled back the blanket curtain (technically my blanket curtain!) and in the politest possible way I got my blanket back.
(It was anything else than polite and I believe that he was scared of me once that was over)
But I had my blanket back. 💪

After a half angry, half content sleep I managed to get up in time and see the turtles the next day.Read more