Costa Rica: Part 2
Costa Rica: Part 1
It's hard to believe we were only in Costa Rica for 4 days (excluding travel days) because we saw so much of the local culture and did so many activities. Vacations are never long enough but we really took advantage of our time down there.
Our third morning in CR we decided to do a tour of Manuel Antonio National Park. We knew it was going to be another hot, humid day and the rain would probably start around 3 in the afternoon so we had to do an early tour. We ate the complimentary, freshly prepared breakfast at our hotel (La Posada) and headed out on our tour.
You can explore the park on your own but using a tour guide is worth the cost (about $10/person). We had no idea what animals we were looking for while we walked around the jungle. A big perk of the tour was that the guide had a telescope so we could get a pretty good look at the animals in the distance.
We saw sloths (which is seriously the slowest moving animal alive), iguanas, crabs, lots of birds, and the most exciting - monkeys!
It took about an hour to get from the entrance of the park to the beach, but we were often stopping to look at the animals so it was probably only a mile. The beaches in the park were beautiful; much nicer than the public beach. These were private beaches so you didn't have to worry about vendors come up and bothering you along the beach.
There were a lot of monkeys hanging out on the beach and if you had any food lying around they were certainly going to join your party and take your food from you.
We were starving so we decided to head out of the park to grab food (no food in the park) and then go back to the beach in the afternoon. You couldn't see any hotels from these beaches and they weren't very crowded so it was much more peaceful and relaxing - paradise!
After a few hours we walked back to the hotel since the park was closing. We found a guy that was cracking open coconuts so we bought some fresh coconut water - straight from the coconut! It was pretty delicious being that fresh but I was definitely not a fan of the jelly like substance on the inside of the coconut.
The next morning we did a canopy (ziplining) tour through the jungle with Canopy Safari. There were probably a dozen zip lines, a few areas to repel and a tarzan swing. The tarzan swing was a little frightening!! Overall it was an awesome experience and got the adrenaline flowing!
Later in the day we took the bus back to San Jose and stayed our last night at Gaudy's (same place we stayed the first night we arrived).
It was a quick trip but definitely one we won't forget :)