"I'm on a boat!"

Last night we were ambitious and had planned to get up early today. But we had a such long day yesterday, we slept in. Around 9:30AM, we walked down to the hiking trail by the beach in hopes to find some wildlife.  We haven't even made it half way to the trail.  I spotted a small yellow squirrel monkey in a big tree above us.  Then they all started to come out, jumping from branch to branch and eating leaves. These squirrel monkeys were really cute and tiny with white faces and black eyes and mouths. I really wanted to keep one for a pet. 

After 20 minutes of gawking at the monkeys doing monkey business we headed for the hiking trail excited for more animal activities. The trail wasn't very difficult and took about 20 to 25 minutes to complete. There was a view point of the harbour which was similar to what we get at our bungalow.  We didn't see any animals, not even an iguana.  It looked like we have to make a trip to the national park tomorrow.  We worked our way to the beach and were told yesterday there was a sloth hanging around one of the trees on the beach.  We held little hope that the sloth would still be there today but to our surprise it was still there snoozing away.

Then we heard howling in the distance.  Down the other end of the beach there were two howler monkeys way up in some tall trees.  By their very loud sounds I thought they would be way bigger, but they were only slightly bigger than regular monkeys.

We got back to the bungalow around 11 to get ready for our inshore fishing trip in the afternoon.  Greg really wanted to go fishing on this trip so we rented a boat from Mar 1 Sport Fishing.   The four burly New York guys we ATV'ed yesterday recommended it to us.  They had been on a week long fishing vacation with Mar 1.

We rented the boat for $950 USD for about 5 hours. We met up with Mark at the marina just before noon.  Mark was the owner of the boat and was also a fellow Canuck. We grabbed a few snacks for the trip before we hopped on the Reel-In.  The Reel-In was a 36' Bertram with a fully air conditioned cabin, complete with two bedrooms, full bathroom and shower.  Of course we didn't spend too much time inside.  Included with this rental, was a fridge full of soft drinks and beers.  It was emptied by the time we got off.

Because we made the booking on a short notice we had to troll around the harbour for an hour looking for bait first. The ladies didn't mind. We hung out on the top deck blasting music from our iPods and gossiping about celebrities. After catching 15 sardines for bait, we were off to the deeper water to fish for our dinner.  The boys caught a small seabass and jackfish right away.  Seabass we kept and threw back the jackfish since it was not a good fish to eat.  The boys were optimist we will catch plenty for dinner, however their fishing luck stopped at the bass.  They caught two barracudas and half dozen of the jackfish.  

Despite the lack of fish for dinner we still had a great time on the boat.  We returned back to the marina just before dusk.  We packed up our one lonely bass and found a restaurant called Santana's in downtown Quepos to cook it up (at a slight discount than the menu price).  When I handed the waitress our bass, her eyes opened wide and asked "just one?"  Yes, I smiled.  The bass came back to us beautifully grilled.  Each of us took about two bites.  The crispy shell and tender meat just melted in our mouths.  So glad we didn't just abandoned it.

Again for the third night in a row we OCD'd the seating arrangement at dinner and all it was missing was Mel Gibson at the next table.

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Location:Manual Antonio