Manuel Antonio

Today, we had a great day again in Costa Rica (it seems that the days here are either exceptional or rather boring, while in Nicaragua for example almost all days were really cool but neither boring nor exceptional) at Manuel Antonio.

We started off the day with making our own pancakes. Nuno ended up eating 6 (cookie monster), while I actually had 5, well the last one was a tiny one ;) The perfect start to the day! Oh, did I mention we were making these pancakes at 7 in the morning? After a bit of salsa dancing while waiting for the paste to be finished.
 Yep, it's official, the girl that was always late into work, and before that to school, the one that could not be awaken before around 8 in the morning after 30 minutes of snoozing, yep, the lazy morning sloth called Helena actually now wakes up by herself at around 6 in the morning!!! Yep, hell has now officially frozen over ;)

Talking about sloths, after the lovely breakfast, we took off to the Manuel Antonio park.

We had read that it is one of the most touristy parks in Costa Rica, but that it is still worth a visit. And yes, the bible (travellers nickname for Lonely Planet's Central America on a Shoestring guide book) was right on both accounts. This was the most touristy place I have been to so far. The entrance was just full of people and when walking through the park we were never alone for the first hour or so. But it is also one of the coolest parks I have been to.

We were lucky in that it rained really heavy yesterday night, starting at around 4 in the afternoon and only ending at around 6 this morning. Why? Because the heavy rain during such a long time meant that the sloths had to come out into the sun to dry this morning :D So we managed to see loads of sloths, both two-toed ones that are brown and hardly seem to move at all, and three-toed ones that have long grey fur that is actually looking green as they move so slowly that moss actually manages to grow on them!

A really cool experience as beforehand we had only seen one sloth, far up in a tree so hardly distinguis
hable, when up in Tortuguero. And seeing some sloths up close was kind of my goal of the day. And it didn't actually matter that there were so many other people around in the park, as sloths at least move so slowly that they won't go away because of noisy people before you manage to see them.

An advantage of the popularity of the park was that many people went in groups with a guide, so we managed to spot a lot of animals by looking in the same direction as the groups did ;) We also heard some of the information the guides provided (such as that the small cappuccino monkeys, the ones with white faces, actually eat iguanas, well, when they are not busy eating chilli flavoured doritos fed to them by some stupid American tourists that is...). And all this without having to pay the extra 20 USD for the guided tour.

(Can you see the frog? this is the same kind as the one with red eyes, but now is sleeping)

A morning full of animals as besides the sloths and cappuccinos, we also spotted loads of iguanas and lizards, a sleeping green frog that disguised itself  through camouflaging by sleeping on a huge leaf the exact same colour as the frog, a cool huge blue butterfly who disguises itself by mirroring its surrounding - hence it was blue on the top mirroring the sky, and brownish grey bellow -, a crazy coloured frog that almost looked like a snake, some raccoons, a family of howler monkeys, a small colibri and probably some other animals that I have forgotten.

 

 

 

 

We also had a swim on a beautiful calm beach, although we had to keep an eye on our bags more for the risk of having the cappuccinos stealing from them than the human thieves this time.

After a well deserved lunch, Nuno rented a surf board and hit the waves for a couple of hours, while I first played in the waves, then did a stunt as a professional surfing photographer (no career change in sight there I think), before falling asleep on the beach while my flip flops were swollowed by the tide... Oh well, they were breaking apart anyway.

Now I just need to find another pair that are comfortable. So a lovely, beautiful day in this very touristy part of Costa Rica. A day to be remembered.