To my pleasant surprise, I woke up to the weather pictured left, i.e. picture-perfect! Our very nice (English-speaking) manager at Hotel Mandarina assured us that the weather would be beautiful in the mornings and early afternoons, and then the skies would cloud over in the late afternoon / evening. Thunderstorms would reign the night. In fact, our little lady was proved wrong, as it turned out to be sunny almost every single day! It didn't rain again until we headed back to the capital city. So we checked in at Hotel Mandarina, paid cash (since the credit card machine was "broken"), and got to vacationing!
After seeing the crocodiles and walking the beach, it was time for scuba. Katie wasn't certified, and I was ready to hop back in the ocean after exploring the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. This turned out to be a huge disappointment. Besides getting unbelievably sea-sick on the first day (it takes a while to get sea-legs back), the visibility was terrible. The divemaster suggested that during the dry season the conditions are better, but he seemed to be pretty okay with what we saw. A couple turtles and lobsters scuttled about, but the biodiversity was fairly poor, and the visibility was worse. My recommendation: stick to the beaches in Costa Rica. There's a reason why there is only one dive shop in Manuel Antonio.
But I really shouldn't complain. This was such a wonderful break from a grueling third year of med school. The coffee was divine, we climbed an active volcano and watched it spew lava, and we ate delicious delicious food everywhere we went (fish tacos on the strip by the hotel are a must!). It was annoying that prices were almost equivalent to America (don't head to CR if you think you'll be paying South America prices - unless you really get off the beaten path, know a lot of Spanish, and aren't pasty). But it was still worth it. My parents were coming in town the next week, so it was nice having a heads up on certain issues... like credit card machines.
Within the first few days, I experienced an interesting trend. A lot of merchants' credit card machines seemed to be "out of order." I would try to pay with a card, and the server or store-owner would run it, but then he/she would tell me the machine had been acting up. Do you have cash? At first I just handed them the colones, but I realized that I was running out of currency quickly. Then we went to a restaurant where we saw one of the locals pay with a credit card, but mine mysteriously didn't work. I discovered that a lot of merchants don't want to pay the taxes or leave a paper trail, and they know that foreigners tend to have lots of cash on them. Thus, their machines "break" when a foreign card gets swiped. Interesting. Funny how when I said I didn't have any cash on me, and then tried to walk out, the machine magically started working again...
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