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Manuel Antonio National Park: 0 km
It’s raining heavily during night and we notice one drawback of our accomodation. The room seems to have a corrugated sheet roof which considerably increases the noise of the rain. Fortunately it stops raining in the morning, and when we leave for our National Park tour at 08:00 a.m. we enjoy first sunbeams. In the course of the day it gets more and more sunny and almost too hot.
As other tours before also this one is very interesting, and it’s really amazing to experience our guide spotting lots of animals between all these green leaves. His big telescope enables us to watch distant animals up close. We see some sloths, many iguanas, lizards, birds, bats, and a frog in a knothole. Some of the sloths we see do carry a baby and others are even moving. That’s really remarkable because normally these animals spend
17 hours of the day sleeping.
Finally at the beach we meet a lot of white face monkeys, raccoons and coatis. These animals are used to human beings and get very close begging for food. Although it’s strictly forbidden to feed the animals unfortunately not everybody cares about that. The animals are really not shy at all. One racoon even puts his head in our open backpack while we are watching the sea.
The tour lasts 2 ½ hours and after that we remain in the park on our own. We enjoy swimming and relaxing at the beach. Fortunately there are enough shady spots to protect us against the burning midday sun.
We leave the park through a side entrance and are surprised to find a large water surface which needs to be crossed. A Tico in his rowing boat brings us to the other side and we leave 1000 Colones (2 $) in his tip box.
A street vendor persuades us to buy a fresh coconut. First we drink the milk through a straw. Then the guy takes the coconut and with the help of a machete he gets the delicious flesh for us.
Instead of the bus which runs every 30 minutes, we take a taxi back to the hotel. There we spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the pool.
In the evening we have dinner at restaurant La Cantina which is only a short walk from our hotel. Their specialty is BBQ and both of us have steak, but with different sauces. The meat is tender and very tasty. Also the side dishes are very good.
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Travelogue Costa Rica — Day 16, Friday, 3rd Dezember 2010