Day 16: Manuel Antonio National Park

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Up bright and early for our free breakfast of coffee and pineapple! very local! and to catch the 8am bus to Manuel Antonio. Once arrived, we wandered up to the entrance, passing a racoon in a bin (hahaaa) and pushing aside the guide offers. We were going to do this ourselves!!!! The beginning of the trail was a bit dissappointing as it was more of a road than a path, and there were telephone wires alongside the road - not very natural! Lots of tour guides were ahead, whipping out their binoculars and working up the tourists into a frenzy by pointing at the trees, so we tried lurking behind some of the groups...walking verrrry slowly to see if we could spot anything. We could not. Maybe a guide would have been a good idea?!?! Eventually we left the main trail to go to a view point at Cathedral Point.. WHAT a mission!!! The birds-eye-view map didnt exactly point out that it was an uphill trail. Very uphill. By the time we´d reached the ´viewpoint´which was a small gap in the trees, we´d seen howler monkeys, loads of iguanas and some weird wombat looking things. Like a beaver without a tail? (must look up some animal names.)

We walked back down again, getting a bit more irritable from starvation and the sweltering heat! We bumped into Rach and Tod coming back from another trail who advised us not to go down it as there was a swarm of "orange beasties" i.e. midgeys at the end of the trail. So we were quick to avoid that one!! 800m was the next trail and again it was uphill. Stupid mountainous areas. We caught up with some guys who were taking pictures of monkeys (the monkeys with white faces, like Marcel from Friends!) and the monkeys were really close to the path! We stuck around for a bit and suddenly a monkey was on the path with us, trying to get into the mans bag and when it got bored of that, it tried to fiddle with tashas!! Tasha wasn´t too happy and Em was mumbling rabies rabies rabies under her breath, so we started to move and the monkey ran off. We carried on climbing until we started hearing howler monkeys ahead. They´re so loud! Tasha didn´t like it, but Em forced her up the hill to the next viewpoint. Just before reaching it Tasha noticed Emily heading straight towards a huge iguana on the path, but wait, hang on, she had not noticed it! Soon enough she practically trod on the poor thing who then leaped down the edge of the mountain and gave emily the most tremendous fright! Tasha watched and laughed! Just as great as the last viewpoint, again we were sweaty and without view! If only someone would cut down those trees in the way...guess the idea of "nature reserve" is probably anti a bit of deforestation...? Back down again and to the beach for a little sunbathing.

Knowing the tide was coming in, Em tied her bag to a tree (very clever) but we got peckish so grabbed her bag down to get some food. (not so clever). As we were laughing at some girl getting totally wiped out by a massive wave, we were suddenly very very aware that this massive wave was heading right up the beach to where we were sitting. We made a quick grab for our bags...towel, books and flipflops floating down the beach by now but we´d preserved everything important as everything important was in our bags. Right? oh wait....there´s Ems camera having a little swim in the sea. lovely. Needless to say, it didnt enjoy this dip and was completely dead. 😞 Em was fuming and Tasha very kindly washed towels, laid things in the sun and generally stayed out of Em´s way while she sulked a bit on the beach... (fair enough Em says!!!!!!) After a while we left the park via a more scenic beach route and exited at a small river area. We were wondering why there were four boats lined up with expectant looking men by them, and then suddenly remembered that the Travel guidebook/bible says that they´re trying to get tourists to pay a dollar to cross, when you can easily walk it, and they may tell you there are crocodiles but they´re lying!! So we ignored the men and started wading through. It was really shallow the entire way and we had a good laugh at people who were boating it.
(Later on, when we met up with the 2 couples, it turned out they´d both got the boat across. $2 for a ten second journey? what a joke! turns out the joke was on us when someone chirped "you do know its contaminated water dont you?". Lovely. We´d missed the massive warning sign and waded our way through Poo water.)

After the poowater incident, we found a restaurant for some nacho salad served by an angel. He was beautiful. A little lost for words, we spoke to him for a bit until we felt too girly and had to leave. After this we trekked up (yes, UP again) a massive hill to meet our friends at El Avion - a restaurant surrounding an old plane, and a bar which was inside the plane body! We sat down in the hopes of cocktails and a pacific sunset. Cocktails were a yes, sunset was a no as it absolutely tipped it down. Like a slit in the cloud, the rain fell SO heavily and we watched lightening fork across the horizon. In the distance, we caught a glimpse of the sun dipping into the sea, so although it was a rainy sunset, it was definately an interesting one.

We ended up manically running into the road to flag down a bus, and we all got drenched within the space of 15 seconds running, arrived home to dry off, eat some food and watch a film in the infamous "tv room" !!

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