Advertisement
Published: December 5th 2015
Edit Blog Post
Friday
Today is our day to visit the nature reserve, Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. It was declared a national park in 1972, preserving it from being bull dozed and razed for a coastal development project (they say with just minutes to spare!). It is Costa Rica's smallest national park and one of Central America's top tourist attractions.
We caught the 6:20am bus just across the street from the hostel. The bus stopped along the ocean in Manuel Antonio, with just a 300M walk to the park entrance. We thought the park opened at 6am, but it was 7am, so we had a short wait to get our tickets. In the meanwhile, about five guys asked if we wanted a guide. We said we wanted to go solo. They wanted $65 for a private guide and $20 per person for a group. The last guy would not take no for an answer until it was NO. Tickets are very cheap for locals, $16 for tourists. Quite a difference! (Tickets last year were $10.) We were the first ones into the park. As soon as we walked in, we saw several blue morpho butterflies.
There are many well-marked trails in the park, easy walking, but very hilly, many steps up and down, up and down. Most stairways were edged by railings. The trails went through jungle forest areas, down to beautiful beaches with great views across the bay to pristine outer islands.We could see Isla Verde, where humpback whales can be seen from September to November (just a little late!). Gail and Richard, we saw some of those wild animals that frequent your balcony, the racoons. They were quite tame, and seemed to go where the groups of people were. They have probably been fed and they're not stupid! We heard a couple of howler monkeys, but did not see any. We were really hoping to see one of those. There were many white-faced monkeys along the beach. One was sitting on a post posing just a few feet from people. We saw iguanas, a couple geckos, some buzzards, a woodpecker, and some small birds. Some birds were hard to identify because they were deep within a tree, or the sun was such that you couldn't make out the colors.
The crowds started picking up about 12:00, and we were getting
tired from our five hour walk! But we saw a sign for a waterfalls, a mile roundtrip, so we decided we had to see that too. We were expecting a bit more water, but it was still a pretty area.
The walk from the bus stop into the park was pretty empty when we came early in the morning, but when we left it was crowded with venders selling crafts, water, coconut milk, etc. We took the bus from Manuel Antonio back past our hostel and into Quepos. Stopped at Soda Sanchez again, and again good food and big portions (chicken enchiladas and hamburger/fries).
We had a fun day, but tiring! Bob is depressed to hear that the temps back home are in the 40s. We were hoping to escape the cold! Tomorrow we leave in the morning for Uvita, further down the coast.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0318s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb