Blogs from Manuel Antonio, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 6

Visiting Manuel Antonio National Park is a highly recommended trip in Costa Rica. In all we spent 3 days in the area. We stayed in Quepos, which is an interesting, basic, low profile Costa Rican town with a mixture of tourists and locals – at the Wide Mouth Frog Backpackers – again, highly recommend this hostel! Two days we took the bus over the giant hill to Manual Antonio township. The first, we visited the National Park. Note here, the park is closed on Mondays and it does get very busy with locals hitting the beach on the weekend. We opted not to do a tour as we felt pretty comfortable spotting wildlife ourselves. We were handsomely rewarded! On the track to the waterfall, we stumbled across a Howler Monkey feeding on fruit in the canopy ... read more

Our trip from San Jose to La Fortuna was uneventful. We took a bus from San Jose to San Carlos and then continued on to La Fortuna at the base of Volcano Arenal, both trips were about 2 hours for a total of 4 hours on the bus. As we arrived the imposing Arenal looked over the city and created an easy marker for navigation for our time in La Fortuna. We knew before we arrived that we wanted to take a guided tour of Arenal and the surrounding area and possibly include a visit to the hot springs in our tour. Upon our arrival we were greeted at the bus station by some people wanting us to stay at their hotel. Due to the recession and the rainy season tourism is pretty depressed in all ... read more

Well we went to the restaurant Hicaco, in Jaco, to find that it was closed. So we headed to a restaurant in Herradura beach, called El Pelicano. Not only did I have the best seared yellow tail tuna I had every had, I also had a few of the best piña coladas ever made! Our dinner was delicious and we enjoyed the sunset right over the water. Yesterday could not have gotten any better! My dad and I rented a car and drove down to Manuel Antonio National Park. We went on a tour with a man named William, who was incredibly knowledgeable about all of the different animals in the park. He also had the unbelievable ability to spot insects and camouflaged animals that we would have never seen with our untrained eyes. After a ... read more

After spending another Monday night with the Jaco locals at Tabacon in which a good hour of the night was spent looking for a lost mojo I woke up later than I'd hoped. The plan was to go to Manuel Antonio National Park today. I caught the chicken bus at 9.30 with quite a number of gringos and then enjoyed some added 'rest' time. The park is good hour and a half from Jaco, but a beautiful day trip. It is quite small however there are three different beaches throughout the park and heaps of wildlife in which to cast your eyes. I was lucky enough to see two sloths, hundreds of monkeys and just about as many iguana's. The beach was my home for a couple of hours..I'm sure you know whats coming next...I swam, ... read more

So I woke up pretty early today, went outside for a little bit and then came back in and fell asleep for a little longer. It was supposed to be stormy today, but it was pretty sunny out in the morning. We went over to the hotel restaurant again (arroz con pollo again… delicious!!!) and had lunch and relaxed. There were the small monkeys all around the area (including outside our room) and we went and hung out with them for a little bit :) They were eating coconut from people and they were SOOOOO cute! I want one!We went out to walk on the beach again and spent a lot of time down there because hey, why not! We were heading back but decided to go look for some jewelry at the vendors shops. Then ... read more