July 11th: National Park!

Hi! Considering my day has unofficially been declared slightly more awesome by the fact that I got to feed a monkey, I have been told today is my day to blog about... or maybe it’s because Nick is happily occupying himself with his guitar at the moment with his beloved Imperial beer by his side. Either way, let me tell you about Manuel Antonio! We woke up early this morning and went down to get our free, but still individually made breakfast by the pool. I had my tea, Nick had his first cup of Costa Rican coffee, it was a good start to the day! Before heading back to the room, we ran into Alonso (who we have now declared as our favorite person we have met). Alonso overhead us talking about geckos and pulled us aside to show us a spider. You know it’s a bad one when someone makes the point of telling you that you need to come see this one. It was huge. It had biceps. Yes, the spider. I happily listened along as Nick and Alonso had full conversations in Spanish about the spider... and then the caterpillars. We should have hired Alonso as our nature guide! We are hoping we will run into him tomorrow morning as well!

We spent the afternoon in the Manuel Antonio national park! We decided against paying double for a “tour guide” to show us animals through the main walk into the park. At one point, I stopped and backtracked a few feet because there was a tour guide behind me that stopped and was pointing at something. As he set up a telescope next to small iguana, he smirked at me and told me “you should have gotten a tour guide”... little did he know, Nick and I would continue on to find multiple iguanas, monkeys, a sloth (although it was sleeping), bright red crabs, birds, a snake in a tree, and other stuff all on our own. We were pretty pleased with ourselves.

A snake picture for Andrea :)

After a long, slow, animal searching walk, we made it to the beach, where there were TONS of monkeys all over the place! We watched and took pictures of them along with the other tourists, and then headed to the water. 

We were hoping the sun would breakthrough at some point, partly because a tan is a necessary take away from this trip, but alas, it didn’t. But we swam and jumped around in the waves regardless. It was still plenty warm out! After awhile, we decided to go hike to the other beach. Great decision on our part! The second we got there, Nick and I chased around the iguanas on the beach, taking pictures. When Nick decided to start taking pictures WITH the iguanas, I have to admit, I was a little jealous. 

I didn’t want to do the same, so instead, I claimed the monkeys, and it was now my turn to get a photo with the monkeys! There was a family of monkeys that were hanging out on a small tree branch overhanging the beach. There were only a few of us at that beach so there was plenty of freedom to follow the monkeys around. They definitely are not shy. They come so close people! Noticing what some of the monkeys were eating, I decided to grab a cluster of berries and just see what would happen. Sure enough, the little monkey came and took it out of my hand! So cool! It just so happened that Nick was videotaping the monkeys at the same time, so he caught it on camera. 

Needless to say, the monkey picture wasn’t even necessary anymore. But just to one up myself, and to not leave anyone out, I figured out what the lonely iguana liked to eat too and fed him on the beach :) I am one with nature. 

Before we left the park, we decided to hike up one more trail to a lookout point. The hike itself isn’t much to talk about, except that I did get some joy out of hearing Nick complaining about how awful his flip flops were as we were trudging through mud and water, and me getting to say “you wanna crack another joke about my “croc-like” shoes?”... :)

Just outside of the park, we got some ridiculously good nachos at a restaurant across from the main beach. From there, we paid a stupid amount for some groceries, pondered about the stupidity as we walked back to our car, took a break back at the hotel and spent close to an hour playing “how many words can you think of that rhyme with GO?” Nobody wanted to forfeit, but when Nick argued to use a proper name for the 4th time, and Spanish words were not allowed, he finally gave in. Maybe it was just because it was getting close to dinner time... We went to the airplane place again for dinner. It was completely dark except for the candles at the tables, and the sounds of all the animals and the ocean. Not a bad way to end the day!