Manuel Antonio National Park

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After Volcan Arenal we had another long bus journey of 9 hours to get to Manuel Antonio National Park, on the Pacific coast. We had heard some great things about this place and wanted to be some where nice for Valentines and also our 10th Aniversary.

We couldn´t of picked a better place, it was gorgeous. Its 3 beaches with rainforest on one side and bright blue Ocean on the other, we would be walking through the forest and gradually see glimpses of the sea and eventually the white sandy beaches, just beautiful and the nicest secluded beaches of our travels. Because it’s in a National park the beaches are spotless as there are not as many tourists that come here because they have to pay to enter. We spent the day walking through the forest and from beach to beach and having to jump in the sea to cool down from the humidity of the forest. We were both really chuffed that we had found such a nice place to celebrate 10 years together, it was perfect.

In the forest we also got to see loads of wildlife, Cappuchin monkeys, 2 toed Sloth’s with a cute little baby, Coatimundi (a bit like raccoons but cuter), Agouti (large ratty looking critters with no tail!), lots more birds and Iguana that attacked Michelle and stole the danish she was eating, very funny! For me the best was the monkeys as we found a family of them and they let us watch them for about an hour grooming each other and looking very cute they came very close to us and were very inquisitive.

We ended the day watching the sunset with a few drinks from a place called El Avion, an old cargo plane from the Iran-Contra affair back in Reagan’s day. It is a restaurant built around the plane, the inside of the plane is a bar/nightclub, with views over the coast and forest. We had a really nice meal out afterwards at a pricey restaurant but it was well worth it and brilliant end to a perfect day.

After Manual Antonio we headed to the Capital, San Jose. Not really much to write about here we just did the usual big city attractions, museums, parks and a bit of shopping.

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