Manuel Antonio

Today, we checked out of our really nice hotel in Estrellos Este and headed towards Manuel Antonio National Park.  I was looking forward to seeing some animals so we left a bit early to try to see them when they are still active.  This was probably a little too ambitious since it gets hot so early in the day around here.  We made it to Manuel Antonio, where they had a gated area to limit the number of people  in the park to about 600 and then you could hire a really expensive guide to help you find animals.  So, we got started with the guide, who took us down the main roadway to the beach.  He was able to spot all the animals probably from doing the tour multiple times.  We saw sloths, capuchins, a large guinea pig like animal, raccoons, birds, and lizards including the famous Jesus Christ lizard that walks on water.  It was pretty fun, but super hot.  I think that we must be getting a heat wave in Costa Rica because during the day time, it gets up to 95 degrees, and in the sun, it is pretty miserable.

Manuel Antonio is a very small park, and they let way too many people in it.  There is pretty much one main trail that is open which is about 1 km, and it is a road.  The beaches are really crowded and the people there feed all the animals, which you aren't supposed to do.  Overall, I was disappointed with the feel of the park.  I expected to get into nature a bit more and avoid the crowds, but I guess this wasn't the right place to do it.

In the evening, we arrived in our lodge in Ojochal.  This town is off the main roadway quite a bit and is very undeveloped.  There are a few hotels and a few restaurants and that is all.  The lodge we are staying in has two bungalows, so we have the place to ourselves.  It's very quaint, and the grounds are very nice.  There are flowers everywhere and the pool is great after a long day.

Canopy Tour

Today, we had a fun time doing zip lines and a canopy tour.  We got our continental breakfast and headed over to Jaco for the adventure.  It started with a 20 minute tram ride up a hill over the rain forest canopy and then some zip lines on the way down.  The rainforest was a combination of secondary growth and primary tropical rainforest, which is obviously much more interesting.  There wasn't very much scenery or wildlife but still fun to be above the trees.

The zip lines proved to be much more entertaining.  Since it was only 4 of us and 2 guides in the group, we think we got a good adventure.  The zip lining was cool, and I got a lot of great pictures.  Even Terry went and did all 10 lines.  Liz tried to do a summersault on the take off point, and I did a semi superman move on the way down.  Liz had a couple other moves to impress her fans, the two guides, Roy and Rodrigo.

First day

Today, I flew in to Costa Rica with a red eye flight leaving at 1:30 am and getting in at 9:30.  Overall it was pretty smooth except for this guy sitting next to me blowing snot into his hand and wiping it on the bottom of his pant leg for the entire trip.  That was super disgusting and for 5 hours I had to be woken up by the sound of the blowing and then look over to see him reach to the floor to clean his hand.

After getting here, we all met up and went for a drive towards Jaco.  It took a while to get there since we took the extremely scenic and slow route but it was nice.  In Jaco, we looked into canopy tours, which will we do tomorrow along with zip lines.  Then we went out for a huge meal in Jaco before going to the hotel.

There was another issue with our hotel in that they decided to bump us by filling up the hotel.  They were happy to offer us a "comparable" hotel down the street.  After going there, we saw that this was a pretty shitty hotel compared to the original so we got to complaining.  It took an hour or so, but they ended up putting us up in a really nice hotel next door with a beach front view.  Can't wait to see it in the morning.