Manuel Antonio

Our first morning at La Mariposa, and we were up early for our wildlife hike in Manuel Antonio - the most visited park in Costa Rica. We started off with the included breakfast looking over the pool. I ordered the traditional gallo pinto which reminded me of the Costa Rican breakfasts we had in Montezuma. A photo below:



Our tour guide was Alex and he picked us up with Carlos the driver, and we rode less than 10 minutes to get to the entrance of the park. We were greeted there by his 9 year old nephew, Dejan. All the guides knew each other, and one of them was Alex’s brother and Dejan loves scouting for animals in the park so he comes when he’s not in school. Their group was always near ours, so we got to interact with Alex’s family and hear about how many steps Dejan had taken as he was addicted to his pedometer.

We saw a lot of animals on a very well managed trail and all the guides carried standing telescopic lenses to spot the animals - you could even take photos from your phone through the lenses. The walk was wonderful as they were no other guests with us, so essentially we had a private tour. Here’s Marie at the entrance area pointing to the map:



Here’s a crab:



Some plants related to the bird of paradise:



A lizard:



We saw this snake in the wild and from afar - very poisonous and see if you can spot it!





A tent making bat who pokes a hole and protects itself under large leaves:





A white tailed deer - one of the Costa Rica symbol of wildlife animals:



A sloth - also a symbol of Costa Rica:



Dreamweaver spider:



The tour included fruit and juice in the middle at a cafeteria:



Here’s Dejan and Alex spotting a sloth:



Here it is kind of as a fur ball, but you can see the three toes…there are two toed sloths and three toed ones…

At the famous Manuel Antonio beach. We didn’t bring our bathing suits, but we were also okay with not going in:





Another lizard:



Espadilla Sur (south) beach… the north beach is a public one and not in the designated park area which has grown over the years to protect the wildlife:

You can see our hotel from here which is the highest in Manuel Antonio:



The poisonous tree - the bark, the leaves, the fruit, all poisonous, but the lizard can eat the fruit!



And touch it:







Here’s Alex and I making the classic “Stephen” face as Marie always yells out his name and makes him look back for photos:



After our 3 hour walking tour with our nature guide, we returned to the hotel where we had a quesadilla and caprese salad. I also had a piña colada and finished my book. Marie took a photo of me in a different pool underneath the water:



Marie headed up first to the room and on my way up, some of the servers were looking at some monkeys. I didn’t think anything of it, but when I got out of the elevator, there were two laying in from of our room and another two on the railing. These were the white faced mean omnivores and when they saw me, 3 of them jumped into the tree. But this one stared at me - definitely felt a bit alpha and I yelled for Marie and she came out of the room. She was so excited she tried to take photos while I rushed into the room as I was afraid he would follow us in:



After washing up, Marie enjoyed a drink watching the sunset while I took a call while watching the sky from our room. Then I joined her for a walk into town, where we ate at Agua Azul - we split tuna tostadas, seafood pasta, and panko breaded tuna. I also had an Imperial beer Michelada style, so with lime juice and salt. We then returned to the hotel as we have another early morning to minimize any rain during this technically rainy season.