Costa Rica: Manuel Antonio

The sun goes down so early in Costa Rica - but comes up again even earlier it seems. By about 5 AM light woke us up. We went down to breakfast at 6 AM that was included with the hotel. We then drove down toward the National Park. The road ends at the National Park and everyone wanted us to park at their spot of dirt. One of the people offered us a tour of the National Park as well so we took him up on it after he offered us one of many other adventures - including snorkeling off a boat. I heard that the snorkeling isn't good there and it isn't a reef, but just a few rocks. Plus the beaches are pretty, but the water was not very clear - they reminded me more of the beaches we have here in St. Augustine.

I am so glad we got a tour guide for the National Park or we would have missed out on SO many animals. The guide walks around with Telescope and points out animals that you could really only see with it. We saw sloths, howler monkeys, yellow viper snake, a really large group of white faced monkeys, tons of iguanas, Jesuscristo Lizards, raccoon of course.

howler monkey

white-faced monkey

monkey time

see the monkey in the far right corner

super cute sloth only visible through the binocolaurs

The national park has many trails and there are multiple beaches there. The water was perfect temperature. The racoon at the park are no different than those in the States - they are ruthless. There was these 2 guys who warned us not to leave our bag on the beach because the racoon will molest them. We didn't have any food in our bag to cause our bags to be bothered, but those 2 guys sure did. Every time they would walk into the water 3-4 large racoon would walk up to them. All you would see is one of the guys running from the water and throwing things at the racoon. Then it got even more brutal when they found a stick and started pounding on the racoon who didn't even flinch. The racoon continued to attack. All the while tourists were taking pictures. The guys tried to put their bags in the trees and the racoon just climbed the tree to get to the bag. It was crazy!

iguanas every where

After the national park we headed to the hotel to shower for ziplining. It began to sprinkle. The ziplining was with Titi Canopy Tours and was AWESOME!!!! Awesome because the rain made the lines wet and caused us to go super fast. So fast that they had to use the emergency brakes and even catch us at the end before we hit the tree. One of our ziplines was almost 1500 feet long. We had a great time and every activity is always complete with fresh pineapple, watermelon, and mango water. They even had what they call "cookies" or Yipy wafer treats. We liked them so much we bought 12 packs of them to bring back with us. 

We made friends from this couple from Canada. They are backpacking through central/south america until Christmas and costa rica was their first stop. We offered to take them down to Quepos (about a 15 minute drive from Manuel Antonio) for dinner and to hang out. We learned a lot from them about how nice hostels can be and inexpensive. I think if I were to do this trip again I would have stayed at a hostel - way cheaper and still really nice ones with private rooms. 

the sunset

The couple from Canada we met

Down in Quepos there was a market going on for about 5 hours - with tons of amazing looking fruit and vegetables among other items for sale. We bought some of the odd looking fruits that were plain delicious and cost like $2/bag. We ate some traditional food from a lady there at the market. After talking with them we told them we would pick them up at noon to take them to Jaco on the way to Arenal/La Fortuna. One of them left their passport in the hostel and had to go and get it.