Manuel Antonio Park

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We woke up a couple times during the night because there was an insane rainforest thunder storm beating down on us. Extremely loud thunder, pouring rain, really close lightening, and all that jazz. It continued on trough the early morning, so we decided to sleep in a bit more because the park would have been muddy and difficult to trek through if we had arrived there at the initial time we were going to. Once we finally got up, we went to Anita’s house just a few steps away to have breakfast. It was honestly the best breakfast we’ve had in a good while. Toast with guava marmalade, a beautifully arranged tropical fruit bowl, coffee, eggs any way we wanted them, fresh squeezed oj, and fresh baked muffins to top it all off. Karin was complaining about her many many bug bites, so Elena sprayed some windex on her, and it actually helped. After a wonderful breakfast chatting away with Anita and Elena, we were off to Manuel Antonio Park. So once again, we hitchhiked down to the park with some Finish fellows who were gutsy enough to pick us up, but did not saw a single word to us throughout the entire ride. When we got to the park after a short ride, we thanked our “friends” and headed towards the park entrance. When we got to the entrance we realized we had to either wade across a 3 feet deep river or pay a man on a little boat to paddle us across this short river. So what did we do? We waded on through. Luckily Karin and I made a great purchase of water shoes which ended up saving our butts in many of our wet hikes. When we got to the other side of the river, we saw a sign that said crocodile habitat and basically almost crapped our pants. We waded through a crocodile home, great! After that wonderful shock we finally started trekking our way through the park. It was absolutely beautiful. We’ve seen amazing beaches and gorgeous rainforests, but to see them come together is a wonderful experience. We hit some breathtaking view points and made our way up a cliff, which was not an easy trail, and then back down to the other trails. We hadn’t seen any monkeys yet, but we encountered tons of crabs, which are so strange to see in the rainforest. After we finished our firs trail, we emptied out onto the shore. There was a crowd of people around a tree who were staring at three monkeys just swinging around. We ran there and realized that there were TONS of monkeys. It was so strange to see them in the wild. They would pose for pictures and they definitely were not afraid of humans. There was a guy eating a piece of fruit and a brave little monkey was tapping on his head trying to get some. We spent a good 45 minutes with the monkeys and other animals as well. I chased after an iguana to get a video of it and we are not completely positive, but we think we saw an anteater walking along the shore. It was so much fun seeing the monkeys interact with each other and with humans. Basically, they didn’t really care to be near you unless you had food. Karin opened up a cliff bar and within a minute there were 10 monkeys l around us waiting to pounce on any crumb. We took some great pictures and videos that will forever be priceless. We stayed with the monkeys until the huge crowd of Japanese tourists scared them all away. We continued on some more trails, where every once in a while we would stop to see what others were seeing. We decided to do the park without a guide because we wanted to go at our own pace and we ended up seeing everything anyways because we caught up with tour groups. We saw sloths walking high above the ground in the very tips of trees, which is amazing because it looked like no branch could ever support their weight. Sloths are very strange looking animals and they walk extremely slowly. We then saw the biggest spider I have ever seen. It was terrifying. I made Karin get close to take a picture of it. We then saw two raccoons chasing each other down the trail before they disappeared into the forest again. Oh lovebirds…We finally made it to the waterfall trail, which is what we were waiting for all day. It looked like a path less traveled by, but we decided to brave through it anyways because we wanted to see the waterfall. We ran into a couple that told us that the trail dead ends into a river, but we decided to press on to see if we could wade through the river and see if the trail continued. We then ran into a French family who had gone all the way to the waterfall and told us we would have to wade through the river to get there, but that it was worth it. So we continued, got scared because our path took strange turns, we crossed the river 5 times, had to limbo under some crazy roots, but we finally made it to the waterfall. It wasn’t huge but it was still very powerful. We stayed there for a while and took some pictures and decided to head on back. It was very hard to find the path back. It seemed like out trail was gobbled up by the forest many times, and it was getting close to sundown. We got a little scared a couple of times because we were by ourselves on this barely traveled on trail, but we finally made it back. After our waterfall adventure we decided to call it a day. The park was amazing. If anyone is planning a trip to Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio is something you definitely cannot miss. This little park had everything you could possibly expect to find in a rainforest. Insects, tons of them, sloths, monkeys, crabs, the waterfall, the beach, lizards, raccoons, and all sorts of other animas and birds. It was an eye-opening experience to be able to see so much beauty all together working in harmony. You can imagine how tired and hungry we were after trekking through the park for 5 hours straight. We found a place to eat and it was happy hour, so of course we ordered some drinks! After we ate, we made our way through all the street vendors and found some awesome things. After a bit of shopping we caught a bus back to Casa Buena vista, showered, and thought about going out. We ended up being too exhausted to go out and dance, so once again I had an awful dinner of bread, energy bars, and cookies and Karin had the Bulgarian guy’s leftover lasagna, and sat around chatting with the other guests staying at Casa Buena Vista. We called another early night because we were exhausted from the park and went to pass out in our pretty room.

I forgot to mention, Karin’s computer, which I decided to take instead of mine, passed out. We’re not too sure what exactly happened, but it stopped turning on. We figured that it was because the humidity or a bug slid its way into some wires and took a huge bite. Eventually we got it to work again and I was so happy because we have all our pictures and such on it. Phew!

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