Pura Vida!! - Part 3

Our final few days of our adventure in Costa Rica were spent in a town and National Park called Manuel Antonio. It's another tourist town, but this one is located on beautiful white sand beaches.

We spent our first day in Manuel Antonio at the National park finding more wildlife. It was so fun to see so many animals that we'll probably never see in person again. We went through the park on our own in the morning. We saw a few animals like this little lizard that scurried by.



We even saw some deer.



I know, amazing. Like we couldn't have seen those any closer to home. They were almost as exciting as the jungle squirrels and pigeons that we saw. We went swimming in the morning in the warm Pacific Ocean at this gorgeous, pristine beach inside the park.



Then later we went with a guide through the park on a practically private tour. It was amazing! Our guide was named Juan Luis Brenes and he is in his early twenties. He's been a nature guide for almost ten years and I would recommend him to everyone! That's a hermit crab in my hand, by the way. They were everywhere.



The advantage to hiring a guide is that they carry a scope (a telescope on a tripod; you can see it in that last picture) so we could actually see the animals and, get this, take pictures right through the scope with our digital camera. Our guide also knew how to work our camera to get the best picture possible. I promise these next few pictures are all from our camera. We didn't steal them from a National Geographic.

Here's our first view through the scope. This is an Orange-Chinned Parakeet hanging out in a palm tree. To give you an idea of scale, this thing was probably 40 feet up in the tree, and it's a really small bird.



I love this picture. These are bats all lined up in a row asleep. We would've never, ever, ever seen these on our own. They were almost impossible to see with the naked eye, and again, forty feet in the air.



A couple more bats.



Here's an iguana. While looking at the iguana we were entertained by two female iguanas fighting over this big hunky stud.



We saw a lot of sloths with our guide. A lot. And they really are very slow animals, which is nice because you can get good pictures of them through the scope. Most of the time we saw them hanging out in the trees sleeping, but when they decide to move they look like they are going in slow motion. It's like you want to press fast-forward to make them move at a normal speed! Below are some three-toed sloths, hanging from some vines. These are the most common of the sloths.




Below is a two-toed sloth, which is more rare than the three-toed. But even more rare, this is a picture of a baby sleeping on its mother! Two-toed sloths are nocturnal, so we didn't see any of them moving around. But, they generally sleep with their heads tucked in to their fur, so it was a treat to see this pig-nosed little baby peeking out at us.



Below is the most sacrilegious of all reptiles, the Jesus Christ lizard, or basilisk. Up top is the male, and below is the female. They're called the Jesus Christ lizard because they run so fast that they can walk on water! It is rumored that they can also turn water into wine, but that has yet to be observed in the wild. You can see on the female that the toes are really long, which help it to stay on top of the water and run away from crocodiles and snakes and anything else trying to eat it.




Like we said, there were lots of crabs. This is a land crab, which stands out like a sore thumb with those bright legs.



Speaking of brightly colored animals, check out this iridescent grasshopper resting on the branch below. I have no idea how our guide saw this, because the thing is about a quarter inch long, and it was not moving at all.


After a full day in the park, we still hadn't seen any monkeys, and our tour was coming to an end. Luckily our guide knew the sounds of the squirrel monkeys, and was able to pick up their call down one of the less-traveled pathways. We raced over to them, and only got one decent picture of them, because they were so small and fast! Here it is.



And here's a not-so-great video of them jumping through the branches. See how much better our pictures are through the scope! It didn't hurt that our guide knew better how to use our camera than we do. Seriously, he was constantly adjusting contrasts, using different settings, and generally being a pro with our camera. He was more than worth the price of the tour.



After we'd hung around the squirrel monkeys for a while, we finally got to see the howler monkeys. We had heard these suckers during our first few days in Costa Rica, but we had never seen them. They howl (duh), but it is seriously deafening. The sound carries for miles. So, we'd heard plenty of them, but never seen them. At least, that is, until our tour of Manuel Antonio. Here they are.





Isn't that baby adorable? Seriously, the photos that this guide took are ridiculously good. Here are a couple of last creepy crawlies that we saw: a couple of tree frogs hanging out on leaves and trying to conserve moisture during the hot day. Apparently the one that is trying so hard to blend in to the leaf during the day looks like this during the night. Apparently we were there at the wrong time of day to see the frogs in full display.




And here's the biggest snake we saw in Manuel Antonio. It's an arboreal boa constrictor. This thing was huge!



OK, just kidding. It was about an inch long. I know, I didn't fool anyone. Anyway, after all the wildlife action, we needed a break. So, we spent the next day and a half eating in cool restaurants and boogie boarding on the public beach. The coolest restaurant we went to was called "El Avion." The owners somehow got a hold of one of the cargo planes that we Americans ditched in Costa Rica in the 80's as part of the Iran-Contra affair. They had it disassembled and shipped piece by piece to the coast, where they painstakingly reassembled it. The bar was inside the plane, behind the gunners' chairs. And, if that wasn't cool enough, it was perched right on the ocean cliffside, so we had a stunning view of the sunset with our delicious food and fresh fruit smoothies. Mmmm. This was one of my favorite moments of the trip.




After dinner, we naively decided to walk the mile down the cliffside back into town to our hotel. In the dark. This was a mistake because Costa Rican drivers, like all Latin American drivers, are crazy. There is no shoulder to the road, and no sidewalks, generally. But that doesn't stop idiots like us from walking in the road all the time. So, the government has to put up special signs to remind drivers to watch out for the local wildlife. You know, like tourists in muumuu's, dingos, dead sloths, and rat-tailed monkeys.



Luckily we made it back alive. After a relaxing Saturday on the beach, we used our Sunday to take the local bus back to San Jose to spend a day before catching our flight home on Monday. There were no chapels in tiny little Manuel Antonio, so we had to make due with just reading our scriptures for our religious services. We got to our hotel around noon, and so we took a walk downtown through San Jose's cobblestone Avenida Central. We had a great lunch at a funky place called Spoon. The table we sat at was a converted sewing machine, complete with a still-functional foot pedal.



Then we stumbled upon Costa Rica's most famous museum, the Pre-Columbian Indian and Gold Museum. We figured that would be an appropriate Sunday activity, so we gave it a shot. It was pretty dang cool, and a nice relaxing way to spend our last evening in the country.



That night we indulged Matt's nostalgia for Argentina by going to a great little restaurant called La Esquina de Buenos Aires. They had very authentic, delicious Argentine food, and great tango music. It was a terrific way to wrap up our vacation. We'll spare you the details of our flight delays on the way home, but we did make it back safe and sound. And our girls even remembered who we were!

So, are you officially ready to take your own trip to Costa Rica? It really was pretty affordable, and we would be happy to give you any hints and tips about our experience. And, if you give us a year or so to save up some cash, maybe we'll go back with you! Pura Vida!