We only had one day in Manuel Antonio, we wanted to see the national park here, but the town is expensive, especially for our backpacking budget, so we couldn’t stay for long. We managed to find a hotel room for £40 a night which was a bit of a bargain. It was surrounded by forest at the back which was a nice bonus. The morning was unfortunately darkened by the news of Russia invading Ukraine and the possibility of world war three. As we were discussing this over breakfast, the hotel owner tapped on our room window and beaconed us urgently. We followed him further to the back of the hotel where he showed us a sloth high up in the tree tops. I say a sloth, I didn’t have my glasses or contact lenses in at this point so for me it was a brown splodge in the trees, but Grace spotted it immediately. We had officially seen our first sloth. So you could say the morning was a bit of a mixed bag!
The owner told us if we could see that sloth then not to bother hiring a guide at the park, as we would be able to spot things ourselves. We felt pretty confident heading into the park and declined every tour guide we saw outside of the entrance. We got into the park around 8:30am and already it was busy. Only 10% of the park is open to tourists the rest is strictly a reserve for the animals to be left in peace and rightly so. But the 10% that is open is packed with two thousand people a day, tickets sell out days in advance, we had hoped getting there early would mean we avoided the worst of the crowds but it was still very busy.
There were large tour groups of 20-30 people gathered around the telescopic lenses the guides use to show you the wildlife up close. We couldn’t really see much of anything, even following where the telescopic lenses were pointed. We hoped it was just because the large crowds were scaring off the wildlife closer to the ground. So we decided to do a waterfall walk that led away from the main trail, none of the groups came down this route as it had steep inclines and declines. Even at the very end of the route, far from the crowds and noise we still couldn’t see much, so we admitted defeat and headed back towards the entrance to get a guide. Unfortunately you’re not allowed to leave the park and re-enter and all of the guides were on the other side of the entrance, we were gutted, thinking we’d blown our chance to see some cool wildlife. But as we walked back into the park we saw a guide on his way back from finishing a tour and he agreed to give us a tour for £15 each which was a bargain! It was just the two of us, as everyone else had already had a tour at the start of the day and was made even cheaper as the guides park entrance had already been paid. Also, as he had just done a tour, the guide had already spent time finding cool animals. So he just had to retrace his steps and show us the things he had already found, he was also able to get information from the other guides that passed us along on their way back from their finished tour. So it worked out brilliantly.
We saw sooo much, it was probably the best £15 we’d spent on the trip so far! He showed us flowers, spiders, frogs, bats, lizards, birds, agoutis, monkeys and three towed sloths. As well as pointing out several interesting flowers and plants to us, he really knew his stuff. Although one thing even we managed to see without his lens was a sloth with its baby that crossed the path, very slowly in true sloth style, right infront of us!
After our tour we headed to the sandy beaches of the park and relaxed in the sunshine until the park closed and it was time to head home. While we sat outside of our hotel room on the balcony eating ice cream (it’s a hard life I know!), we watched another Agouti wander past!
The next day was a long one, eight hours on buses to get us to our next destination of Monteverdi, which I will tell you all about soon.
Lots of love, Alice x