Getting up Saturday morning was not a hurried affair. We were due to meet Jason at 9am so we went about our own things for a while. Around 8:30am we went ashore. The tide was right out so the rocky bank we had previously chained the dinghy too offered no opportunities for a repeat. I was left guarding the dinghy while Helen shopped for bread, fruit and veg.
Jason came by in his car while Helen was away. He went off to park the car and returned at the same time as Helen. We were soon back aboard Dignity. I did one last email check before heading off during which I received an email tsunami alert as a result of the 8.8 mag earthquake down in Chile. The alert contained a list of seaports in Central and South America with, ironically, Quepos being top of the list. It predicted a 24cm wave first arriving at 8:16am in the morning. Looking back we had felt some sloshiness in the ever present swell around that time but had thought nothing of it. That all being said, the lat/long given for Quepos in the email was somewhere slightly inshore of the coast of Gabon, Africa so I wonder how accurate it all was.
Soon we were off round the corner to Manuel Antonio Park where we anchored. We first went snorkeling, the first time for Jason. After a late lunch and a rest we went dinghied ashore. We were met by a park keeper who refused us ashore without a ticket. I had thought, perhaps, we could buy one on the beach but no luck there. We had to dinghy out again through the surf getting drenched. We headed over to the public beach and Jason and I went off and bought tickets to enter, even though we had only about an hour left.
Another drenching as we left the beach and we were back off to the park where we again landed. The park keeper again met us, looked at our tickets and demanded to see our zarpe – clearance papers. We now had less than an hour left so we complained that there would be no time to go back to the boat and get it. He let us off but made it quite apparent we had to be off by four.
We spent the time walking some of the park trails. We saw a lot of white faced monkeys, many of which were down by the beaches. They seemed to be waiting for the public to leave so they could pick on the scraps left behind. Some were lounging quite contentedly on branches with their limbs hanging down. It seemed as if they were posing. On our walk we saw a number of other animals which all seemed quite tame and tolerated our coming reasonably near.
We finished our walk without arriving too late. The park keeper was nowhere to be seen but we didn’t know if he would return to menace us so we made our third trip through the surf of the day back to Dignity.
We spent the evening nervously watching a terrific show of lightening all around us. Knowing what had happened to Callisto we were hoping to be spared.
Today we’ll have breakfast together either here or in Quepos, not sure where. Jason is going to help us cart our dive tanks around town so we can get them filled. At the same time we can get our gerry cans filled with gas/petrol and do a little shopping. This afternoon John should be returning with Ella. We’ll return to the park tomorrow and use Tuesday for a fuller exploration.
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