13th August, Manuel Antonio National Park

August 13th

Today we had an early start for the National Park tour in Manuel Antonio. Dave and I went for a stroll on the beach at six, which was gorgeous. 

We then all headed off at eight and got to the park along with rather a lot of other tourists - quite a contrast to yesterday! Our guide was very good and we saw sloth, spiders, monkeys, raccoon, various birds, crabs and an impressive bright yellow snake. This was

 a very slow moving tour with lots of other 

groups around, so although our guide was very good and set up his telescope for us to get some good views, it was a bit tedious and the boys were glad when it was over! 

Apparently this is a stick bird, viewed through the scope of the guide

Here are the creatures we saw

Common Anole?

White Ibis

Heliconia Flowers, they collect rain water and you can safely drink it !

Green Iguana?

Spider male (tiny and about to become food) and female

Eyelash Palm Pit Viper, eats humming birds

3 toed sloth

Halloween crab 

Raccoon

Black cheeked Wood Pecker

Howler monkey

Baby Howler monkey

A Cayman, not that you can tell as completely out of  focus :-(

We grabbed some lunch in the town and walked back across the beach. There was a little stream that they were charging you $1 to walk across, it didn't even move. So we took aour boots off or jumped .... if athletic enough

The weather was fabulous this afternoon so, after a short siesta we all went in the sea - Ben and Sam with the new frisbee to replace the one that was lost! The sun was really hot and there were people horse riding and parasailing from the beach. A beautiful relaxing scene! We rounded this off with all four of us reading on the beach - a rare event and very peaceful! :-)

The hotel even provides a dog to play frisby with on the beach

We went to the bar for a quick drink and then back to the rooms to get ready for dinner. I (Dave) noticed that the clouds above the trees had all gone pink and grabbed my camera and ran back to the beach. I got the most stunning Sunset

In the evening we trudged up the hill - a steep climb to El Wagon, which was rewarded with excellent pizza served to us in the typical, no walls type restaurant as we sat on rocking chairs! We rounded off the meal with tequila slammers. It started to pour down again so we got a taxi back down the hill to avoid getting soaked and had a short game of cards before bed.