Sunday 2/11 - Exercise, Food Shopping and Partay!

I woke up early on Sunday morning, well rested and excited to explore Manuel Antonio. I left for a run down to the beach which was slightly farther and slightly more hilly than I remembered from the cab ride the night before. It took me 20 minutes to the beach and 30 minutes back from the beach. This was all before 8:30am which is important because otherwise it's just too hot and muggy to do much physical exercise outside of the water.

Back at the house, I volunteered to go into Quepos, the nearest large town, to do an initial grocery run. Cara and Jim decided to come with me, and on the way to the bus stop, we hitched a ride with a turismo van (private hire tourist transportation) that was headed to Quepos anyway. We found Pali, the main grocery store, now nicknamed the Quepos Costco. It's just as rudimentary as Costco, with industrial shelving, and displays in the form of half cut boxes ensuring that contents don't spill into each other. All on a much smaller scale than an actual Costco. It's actually fairly small, but has all the necessities - beer, water, fruit, bread, meat, juice, etc.

We filled two carts of food and alcohol, checked out, and Jim waited with the goods while Cara and I ventured to a liquor store for tequila and margarita mix, as well as some precooked chicken and extra fruit. Once back, we found a taxi, loaded up and unloaded at the house. I had been worried about the temperature of the uncooked chicken we bought for Tuesday night's election dinner, so I was looking through the bags and thought - where is the chicken? Wait, where is the soda? And the butter?....Uh oh! We realised that in the confusion of it all, we actually only paid for and took home one of the two carts of food!

Back in the taxi, back to Quepos, back to Pali, and there our cart was, with additional things people chucked in that they presumably didn't want. Fortunately, someone put the chicken in the fridge at the back of the store (we had taken all the chicken breasts they had left, and most of the legs, so it wouldn't have been easily replaceable), so we were able to escape quickly and head back to the house, again, finally to unload and have a late lunch.

I spent the afternoon at the house in the pool and then headed into Quepos with everyone for dinner, where we found a cheap and cheerful place for casado. Once back at the house, the party really started. We cranked up the music, served up the rum and cokes, and started dancing. We all ended up in the pool (in our clothes, not even bathing suits) at one point, and no one went to bed before 3 am. It was a really good night and a great way for everyone to bond!