Sea sea manuel

We hitched a ride to Manuel Antonio with Linda and the gang, we had heard that the national park down there (the second to be designated in the country) was some what crowded and is often referred to as Disneyland elsewhere in Costa Rica. We were travelling in the minibus (complete with cool box containing ice) which was luxury for us after the hot and sweaty chicken buses of Nicaragua, though sadly our trip this time lacked the powerful and moving melodies of Celine Dion and Phil Collins :)

There was a lot of agriculture between us and Manuel Antonio, the last hour was a mix of uplifting and depressing. We stopped the bus to see a stunningly beautiful flock of scarlet macaws hanging about in the trees by the road. However, the last two and a half hours of the trip were through palm oil plantations where there had once been forest.

Tranopy! This is advertising genius at its finest. What I really want to see are the ideas that were discarded in favour of this one.

Another highlight of the trip to Manuel Antonio was the stop to walk across the crocodile bridge (its not actually called that) over the Rio Taracoles, Costa Rica's most contaminated river http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A1rcoles_River.

  The sand bars below were full of American saltwater crocodiles and the amazing Jesus Christ lizards named after their ability to walk (or rather run) on water.

Manuel Antonio National Park.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Antonio_National_Park.

Its a very small park - I think the 1.8 km Sloth (Perezoso) trail was the longest trail here.  We did indeed see 6 sloths over two days on this aptly named trail.

This is about as quiet as it gets before noon, but after then you pretty much have the place to yourself as everyone is down the beach.

Manuel Antonio doesn't feel like the most remote jungle in the world - this was a crowd viewing a three toed sloth, who didn't seem at all bothered by all the attention. The park is packed with people and animals, on our first day there we saw 2 and 3 toed sloths, agoutis (large guinea pigs), coatis, capuchin and spider monkeys...not to mention a trogon.

We hiked to to the highest point of the park - the view was OK but the Coati's and Trogon were the best part of the walk up there.

Film noir lizard

This is a sloth, just use your imagination

This fruit looked a bit like a red onion but it was a lot slimier and very tasty.

The beaches in the park are idyllic

The hotel dog "Gordo" (fat) was very cute. The hotel was aparently run by Jehovas Witnesses, we did not know this until, one evening while having a swim in the tiny pool (we were futilely doing lengths even though it was only 3m long), some other guests told us that this was the main reason they stayed there as they were also JW's. They were pleasent enough and chatted to us for a good 10 mins before attempting to save us, not from drowning but enternal damnation. Ralph successfully held his tongue but was livid when we opened our door in the morning to find a note pleading us to consider seeing the light.

A cool beetle or maybe a non-believer