I woke up at 5:45 this morning to witness the sunrise and spot the howler monkeys.  Howler monkeys are small, 2 feet at most, but make this loud bellowing noise that I can only describe as the intricate mix between a dog’s bark and an old man with bronchitis.  After some breakfast, we went down to the beach for the morning.  I couldn’t believe the change in tide.  It must have retracted 200 feet, reveling countless crustaceans and marine aqua life.

We made our way over to the exposed coral area, finding crabs, sea urchins, sea stars, slugs, and other various life forms.  There were some large rocks casted out into the ocean that we climbed up.  We were surrounded by a beautiful light blue sky, lively green mountains, and rolling waves crashing against the side of our rock fortress.  The view was incredible.  We then checked  out of our place and made our way over to Samara, another beach.  Our bus never came, so we ended up hitch hiking across the country side.  There is no better way to witness Costa Rican life that the bed of a pickup truck.

Upon arriving, we made reservations in a hostel – where a group of strangers bunk together and share accommodations in bedrooms of 3-4 bunk beds.  The concept is very cool; you meet awesome people doing the same thing as you: traveling and exploring.  The people were very friendly and offered advise as to what we could do for the night.

We then had dinner followed by lounging in chairs by the beach with a couple drinks.  This is truly paradise.  After sitting and talking for a long time, it quickly came nightfall.  The stars are incredible; I’ve never seen so many.  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the Milky Way galaxy.  An explosion of stars dot the sky in a casting streak.  You couldn’t help but feel small is this grand universe.

We then went to the super market, bought a bottle of liquor, and went back to shower up before venturing out to the night life.  We went to a bar called Arribas.  One of the owners of the hostel we were staying at had a friend who worked at Arribas.  After a while, we made our way back walking along side the beach listening to the gentle crash of the ocean waves.

The sky was so radically different, you couldn’t see many stars anymore.  Instead, it was covered by the illuminating glow of the moon.  Where did that come from?  The moon was right at my zenith, with a huge halo encompassing it.  I had seen something similar back in Cincinnati that someone explained to me was caused by the sun’s reflection off the moon casting into ice crystals in the atmosphere.  Ava said it was most likely space dust.  Regardless, it was awesome – literally a perfect circle encompassed the moon.

It made me think back to ancient geometry, and how they discovered pi.  I’ll save the history of that for a future blog post.  Tomorrow we are going to be busing all day to pick up Mark from San Jose.  I can’t wait to see him, we have much to discuss.