Manuel Antonio National Park

Mon 23 Oct: Discovered last night when we arrived that the Manuel Antonio NP is closed on Tuesdays, so we made a quick decision to book a guide for a tour for today. Pick up was 7.30 am. So after a noisy night of sleep. The hostel is right on the main road which was very busy, and also the room has no glass in the window so only curtains to block the sound, not ideal. Anyway we had our breakfast, Doug having the tradition Costa Rican breakfast of rice and beans with scrambled eggs, and I had granola and yogurt, we were soon heading the 5 kms south to the national park entrance where we met our guide Sergio. Costa Rica have made rules to try and be more environmentally friendly, which is great and in theory I totally agreed with but they need a bit of commonsense enforcing them. For example, there is no single-use plastic bottles allowed in the National Parks. Great, but both Doug and I have been refilling plastic waterbottles brought over 6 months ago, but we had to ditch those, therefore making more waste! Not surprising, there was a store next to the entry selling reusable water bottles, so we had to spend NZ$12 to buy one of those to empty our water into for today. Also not allowed any food into the park. Luckily we weren't organized and only had a muesli bar anyway, which we quickly ate. There was a Cafe inside that you could buy food at. We did see a monkey with a bag of chips which he was very protective about and definitely didn't want to share with his mates, so it is good to try and minimize the opportunities for the animals to gain human food. Anyway back to the tour, certainly worth paying for a guide, we would never have seen the animals we did without him. Saw 4 different sloths, both the 2 toed and 3 toed, a red legged grasshopper, two of the three basilisk lizards species - one of which can run on water and the other can change colour. Bat's, white faced monkeys, humming birds, white tailed deer, a carnivorous flower, a caiman, a tiny baby snake, red land crabs and iguanas, so a pretty good tally for a 2 hour, 2 km walk. Once we got to the beach, Sergio left us, and we then spent the next few hours swimming and exploring some of the other tracks, although didn't see anymore animals apart from the white face monkeys including the potato chip eater. We got out of the park about 2.45 pm feeling quite hungry so we caught the bus back to the small town of Quepos 1 km past our hostel. Again finding no really cheap options, eg hamburgers about NZ$18 each, and most dishes starting around $25 to 30. With our hungry getting to us, we finally decided on a large pizza and 1.5 litre of Pepsi for NZ$32 and sat overlooking the water to have that, which was very good. We then found some pastries to take back for supper, and then carefully walked the km back up the hill to our hostel - it is quite a narrow,windy, hilly road with no footpath or side verge. Back at the hostel we enjoyed a lovely swim in the pool before showers and a relaxing night.Read more