Sorry for the posting delay - we've been having trouble finding internet
lately, but we'll try to get caught up in the next couple of days
If you ever visit Manuel Antonio, make sure you stop at this bakery in Quepos... it was INCREDIBLE.
A very happy Roel
Manuel
Antonio National Park was an incredible confluence of man and nature.
We payed for our tickets a day in advance so that we could be among the
first to enter the park at 7am when the gates opened. Early morning is
the best time to see wildlife, but it is also the best time to avoid
hordes of people.
Throughout the night, cars full of vacationers
arrived and the hostel we’d booked a room in got progressively louder.
Semana Santa, or Holy Week had begun. All of Central America was
officially on vacation.
Once we evaded the mass of other
tourists who were lined up at the gate at 6:50am, the sounds of the
early morning jungle were wonderful. Serene, exciting and mysterious all
at once. We saw a troop of howler monkeys first. Then we hiked on a
path we had all to ourselves to a beautiful lookout. On the way back to
the main part of the park, we saw a guide pointing out something to his
group and after they passed we squinted into the trees and eventually
saw what they had seen: a three-toed sloth! It was my first one and it
was just awesome to actually make him out. There is no way we would have
seen him had the guide not been there… in fact, we had missed him when
we walked to the lookout and given that sloths are unlikely to move very
far in any given period of time, he was definitely there.
Look at the toes on this sloth!
A little sloth playing peek-a-boo
We
walked towards the main beach of the park, or what seemed to be the
main attraction, both for people, Capuchin monkeys and opportunistic
raccoons. It was 9am and the beach was already packed. Imagine 4th of
July crowds, but on a National Park beach that you have to pay $16 to
get to!? We were astounded.
By
the time we made it out of Manuel Antonio at 11:30am, hundreds of
people were lined up to enter the park. Holy Week in full force.
From
Manuel Antonio, we headed in the direction of Osa Peninsula, but
stopped to camp for the night on Domicilio Beach… for free :)
On
the way out of Manuel Antonio, we pulled off to snap this pic of a
airplane-turned-bar - pretty neat concept and pretty cozy inside.
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