After taking the bus to downtown San Pedro at 5:00AM, we decided as a group of sixteen to walk a few blocks to the bus station that we needed for our journey to Manuel Antonio, a national park on the Pacific coast. Despite the size of our group and the early hour, however, Tim, who was walking just behind me in our essentially single-file line, was the victim of a theft. A man began walking rather close to his side, bumped him, stole his aluminum water-bottle, and then ran away. Tim was immediately rather unhappy about the situation.
Unfortunately, the day as a whole did not turn out any better for me. Shortly after we left the rest stop toward the second half of our trip, a sudden, stabbing pain rose up in my left shoulder and the left side of my chest. Dislocated or misaligned joints? A reaction to an infection (I was very sick the night before)? Pleurisy? Heart problem? Because of high blood pressure and previous symptoms I have had, I could not just ignore the pain as I hoped for it to subside. However, the pain did not lessen when reached our destination, and seemed to be growing worse. At that point, breathing was difficult because each breath substantially added to the pain in my shoulder and chest. Eventually, I told James, one of our leaders who happened to come with us, that I needed to have the problem looked at.
We took a bus to the nearby town (Quepos), and then a taxi to the hospital, which was a substantial distance from the town. When I arrived, I could not help but be reminded of the hospitals we had already toured in Costa Rica. Strangely, James and I could not help noticing that none of the clocks in the hospital worked, and one of the clocks didn’t even have hands! Eventually, I was called back and had to explain everything to the nurse in Spanish. I was then taken to another room where my pulse, blood-oxygen saturation, and blood-pressure were taken, and although I was very tired and almost sleepy, my blood pressure was disappointingly high (140/80). However, this test and an ECG that followed revealed no heart or circulatory problems, and the cause of the pain was narrowed down to inflammation of one of my ribs.
Although I have no idea why one of my ribs would be swollen, knowing that this was the cause was very relieving, and helped to explain why breathing was so painful. Next thing I knew, I was in a room for billing, where the bill was prepared using an adding machine and a typewriter in an air-conditioned room. I was then able to pay the bill using a credit card and was told to have my insurance company reimburse it. That will be fun.
My next stop was the in-hospital pharmacy, where I waited until my shots could be prepared. Finally, after one in the afternoon, I was called back for an anti-inflammatory shot and a pain-killer shot. When the whole fiasco was over, James and I went out to eat and then went back to Manuel Antonio. By this time, I would only have a couple of hours of daylight at the beach.
When I finally arrived at the beach, I was stricken by the beautiful water, islands, mist, and trees in the background; this was my first time to the Pacific. A large sign at the entrance of the beach warned of rip currents, and the lifeguards were like sharks as they ran frantically back and forth whistling for people to come closer to shore each time they saw a rip current in formation. Additionally, an armada of boats waited out at sea to scoop up anyone who got sucked away. Alternatively, these same boats provided parasailing rides. Last weekend, some EWH students went to the beach and got pulled out by a rip current, luckily being able to stand up well enough to reach shore, carrying a little girl with them who couldn’t do the same. Last year, an EWH student was swept significantly further offshore by a rip current, which carried him off for two hours before he was rescued by the Coast Guard.
After our time at the beach, we went for dinner at a reputably cheap sports-bar, which was, in fact, no less expensive than anywhere else was. Our motivation for going to that specific restaurant, however, was to watch the USA versus Mexico soccer game. Apparently, everyone else there had the same intentions, because the entire place was filled with Americans. When the “Star Spangled Banner” played after the Mexican national anthem, we all sung along, and we all also reacted with one accord to the events of the game, which were in the end unfortunate.
Back at the hotel room, I had a great deal of difficulty sleeping because of the pain in my chest, which grew worse when I lied down. However, when I rolled from my back onto my right side to put my weight on the ribs opposite the swollen one(s), the pain subsided and then went away so that I was able to sleep without a problem.
I woke up quite early and relatively refreshed the next morning and went out to the beach at 7:00 to take pictures and collect seashells. For the most part, I was the only one on the beach at this time, which was quite peaceful. Later, people were parasailing.
When I arrived at the most crowded portion of the park and forest, I was surprised to see there the highest concentration of monkeys. The first one I saw was up in a palm tree with a crowd of people gathered around to take pictures. Meanwhile, a man was shouting at the monkey, “Yeah. I’ve got you; I’ve got your [phone] number!” as he occasionally startled the monkey by hitting the tree trunk with a large plank. At the time, I thought, “how cruel, and what a dumb thing to say... especially to a monkey.” Looking back, I have a pretty good idea of why the man was so irritated.
The white-faced monkeys, as they are called, were all around on this beach, and are considered one of the smartest species in the New World. They also spend more time moving along the ground than most species do, I overheard a guide saying. While I was surveying the troop and looking for photo opportunities, I saw one grab someone’s juice bottle and go running away. As the victims of the theft chased the monkey, it ran faster until eventually reaching a tree that it considered safe. After climbing to a sufficient height, the monkey promptly grabbed the juice-straw and tossed it aside as if performing a familiar task before lifting the carton to its mouth and drinking the contents. Meanwhile, everyone who had seen what the monkey did was surprised at its intelligence and audacity and laughed accordingly. When the juice became inaccessible through the straw-hole, the monkey even ripped open a new hole to fully drain the carton.
Later, one of the tourists wanted to give the monkeys a banana. No sooner had she unpealed it than three monkeys came, each one hanging down by its tail from the branches as it grabbed a chunk of banana. Immediately, monkeys came from the surrounding trees to try to take some of what the others had, causing a general ruckus. Other monkey highlights included seeing the creatures groom each other, attempt to sleep in familial clusters, and one carrying a baby monkey on its back. On more than one occasion, a monkey running or jumping from one tree to another came very close to me, allowing for great pictures.
Also at the park, in nearby pools of water detached from the beach, were “Jesus Lizards”, which I had previously seen on TV running over water. Indeed, the lizards frequently went from place to place by scurrying over the surface of the water on their hind legs, but the creatures moved too quickly for me to be able to fully appreciate their method of locomotion with the naked eye.
In addition to these animals, iguanas were relatively commonplace throughout the park, some being rather large. While taking a trail on our way out of the park, Brandon and I stopped first to investigate the largest anthill I have ever seen, and second to watch a sloth do nothing. Also, though I did not get to see them, some other members of my group saw caimans, a type of crocodilian.
When we arrived back in San Pedro, Gavin, the one who has bad luck with traffic and was almost run over by a train, was almost run over by a bus. This time, however, it wasn’t his fault, and he actually prevented anything from happening to himself. What happened was that as we readied to exit the parked bus through the back door at the bus station, another arriving bus came to pull in between our bus and another parked bus. The result was that right as Gavin was about to step out, a bus whizzed by a few inches in front of him and only about two inches from broadsiding our bus as a whole. The driver quickly slammed on the breaks, as the arriving bus simply wouldn’t be able to fit into the space.
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