Chalkie Dundee!

We left San Ramon at 9am this morning after saying goodbye to the families we have been with for 2 weeks. Although we are all excited to be moving onto somewhere new, it was sad to leave them behind knowing we probably wouldn’t see them again. The minibus journey was just over 3 hours to Manuel Antonio which will be home for the remainder of our adventure. After 2 weeks hard labour we decided we needed a bit of luxury and relaxation so are staying in a very nice hotel up in the rainforest called the Gaia.

We checked in and went down to the pool while we waited for our rooms to be ready. The hotel is amazing, it only has 20 bedrooms and we met one of the owners earlier, but it has everything you could dream of and is set in the most beautiful location. I have stayed in quite a few hotels now and I think this is the best one I have ever stayed in, it is perfect.

We had been at the pool about 20 minutes and all of a sudden we saw about 30 monkeys jumping around in the trees next to the pool, some had baby ones on their backs and Mum got some great photos. We also met some of the hotels other residents, iguanas! One is quite big and he’s not scared of humans at all. We ordered some lunch and sat down by the pool to eat, Chalkie had a burger that the iguana obviously thought smelled good because he dived onto Chalkie’s lap and launched himself at the burger! The burger must have been good because Chalkie would not let it go but neither would the iguana, he kept jumping back up, I wish we had got a video! He managed to get a bite out of it, taking a little nip of Chalkie’s finger with it, it also left some scratches on his chest, hence the title Chalkie Dundee! In the end the bartender came to the rescue and picked up the iguana and moved him away, he also brought Chalkie a fresh burger minus the iguana bite!

We spent the rest of the day by the pool, the hotel is on a hill and has a series of pools that run into each other. This makes them infinity pools so you have a great view of the jungle and the sea behind the mountains. We relaxed for the afternoon then met for dinner in the evening. Nadia and Asma are also staying in Manuel Antonio so they came over and met us for something to eat. It was great to see them again and we had a good laugh about the building work and showed them photos of where we got up to. We were all so tired that we were falling asleep at the table so we went to bed about 10pm.