Costa Rica Day 9

On the ninth day in Costa Rica we finally hit the beach! And it was hot! And humid! And boy was I sweaty! And sticky! Memories of my childhood summers on the beaches of Florida came rushing back. Not that those memories were in any way bad. I loved riding my bicycle out to the beach and splashing in the waves and walking up and down the sandy shores. I had a marvelous childhood home and miss it terribly at times. But hot, humid, sweaty, and sticky are very accurate descriptors for those summers, just like they are perfect descriptors for day nine of my Costa Rican vacation.

Beach pictures to follow, first, our bird of the day, the Golden Hooded Tanager. I only saw this bird once, at the Wilson Gardens. His colors were amazing, so bright he seemed almost florescent. 

Now for the beach. The place we went was called Manuel Antonio National Park. It reminded me a lot of the parks in Florida, except we had to walk about a mile to the water. There were no massive parking lots to accommodate the guests. You had to pay to park in a grass lot outside of the park and then somehow lug all of your beach/picnic gear in with you. Since we were a large group, no one was overly burdened. We all just grabbed a bag and started walking. Of course, like any good national park, there were shops and street vendors along the way to entice the tourists to spend their vacation dollars. 

 

 

We saw lots of monkeys and birds on the walk in. The group often came to a stop when they saw people ahead of them looking up into the trees. I think it took us an hour to walk that mile to the beach.

Whew, made it to the water! Some people went swimming, some went for a walk along the shore, and some stayed in the shade. It was a very pretty area and we had a nice picnic lunch. 

We saw several lizards camped out under the trees. They were not afraid of people and seemed happy enough to share their shade with us. Big lizards, too. Not the cute little ones you see in Florida. These were komodo dragon size lizards. Well, okay, maybe they were more like iguanas than komodo dragons, but they were definitely bigger than the gecko-type lizards I’m used to.

If you like monkeys, this is the park for you. They were everywhere and just like raccoons and squirrels back home, they loved tourists because of the yummy goodies we brought into the park. We had to have someone guard our groceries at all times, which, as you’ll see from the pictures, didn’t work that well. The two types of moneys that we saw were the Capuchin and the Squirrel monkeys. Very cute, but after a while, they became a bit of a pest.

The Bandits!

Carlos told us how the monkeys liked put on a show for the tourists. A few would jump around the branches overhead and play with one another. This got everyone’s attention focused in one direction, looking up into the trees. Meanwhile, bandit monkeys would run across the ground and snatch goodies out the bags. Worked like a charm. Even after Carlos warned us, we fell for it.

It was a wonderful day at the beach. It was even nicer to have a pool at the hotel to jump into upon our return. Even though this was not Carlos’s first choice for hotels, it was great. It had everything we needed... AC and a pool. The gardens were meticulously maintained as well, just like all of the places we stayed on our trip. 

Here we are at our final dinner together. The restaurant had a killer view over the ocean and served fresh fish and fancy tropical drinks; a perfect ending to our Costa Rican vacation. It was hard to believe that our flight home was less than a day away.