For our first day on the Pacific coast we wanted to see monkeys and other critters, but mostly monkeys. To do so, we joined Clarence, our guide, and approximately one bjillion other tourists at the busiest park in all of Costa Rica - Manuel Antonio Park. Guides in this park have different uniforms but are easily identified by their "scopes," high-powered binoculars placed on chest-high tripods. These scopes our carried on their shoulders as they guide up to ten tourists through the crowds. A clump of humans next to a scope indicates an animal sighting. The guides all know each other and jovially chat in Spanish to each other, passing on animal locations. If you want to see more animals, you need one of these guides! If you only want to see monkeys, red crabs and basilisk lizards, you are welcome to go on your own.
Scope on the shoulder, Clarence led us to a basilisk (a lizard with a crown), a parakeet that looked like leaf litter (look for the eyes), a boa constrictor, one lone howler monkey (the world's second loudest animal), Costa Rica's largest grasshopper, red crabs, a cool spider, and two types of bats.
He also showed us grasshoppers on a tree trunk that grow fake legs with some type of white excretion that looked entirely fake but good enought to fool potential predators. It looked like an alien species to me.
As we came to the first of two beaches, Clarence repositioned his scope three times to get us a good view of a sloth, but the sloth, being slothful, was curled up in a ball facing away from us and not moving. So here you have a shot of some sloth fur. (On our second trip to the park, we saw the face of a sloth, but could not get a good picture.) Sloths live very high in the treetrops, only coming down every 8 days to poop in a favorite tree, almost as if fertilizing it. Otherwise, they never come down to the ground.
So, not such great luck with the sloth, but the white-faced capushun monkeys showed up shortly thereafter to distract and charm us. These monkeys are omnivores, and until the park banned food completely, they would wait for the tourist to leave her backpack on the beach and then unzip it and throw everything out looking for food. I saw a monkey do this with my own eyes. Though there is no food, they still haven't caught on to the new rules quite yet. The monkeys we saw included a mom and new baby, clinging to her back, just a few weeks old according to Clarence.
We also observed monkeys eating berries (if a monkey eats something from the jungle, it's safe for you to do so too), jumping from tree to tree like it was no big deal, using their tale as a third hand, and chilling on rooftops in town.
Because of this no-food-in-the-backpack rule, they have devised a clever way to feed humans. You eat your food in a large metal cage. It was in this cage that we paused for fresh fruit and sweet tea. See photo!
After the tour we headed to one of two beaches in the park, Playa Espadilla. This is directly across from the other beach, Playa Manuel Antonio, separated by a narrow strip of jungle that fans out to a peninsula. This is called a tombolo for you geologists out there.
Playa Espadilla has deeper blue water and (I would argue) warmer water. But both beaches are everyone's idea of a tropical paradise. Walking into the ocean here is like taking a warm bath. The following day we returned to the park on our own to see more monkeys and try out some snorkeling at Playa Manuel Antonio where we saw surgeonfish and banded butterflyfish and some large fish, maybe a foot long, that were shaped a lot like trout. You will not see a lot of fish here, but it's a pleasant diversion if visibility is good.
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And now to the world's sweatiest hike, which I completed in a dress no less. Our hotel offers a complimentary tour of their seven hecactre grounds, where they are working on reintroducing macaws into the wild. I expected this to be our tour guide Clarence pointing to plants and maneuvering his scope for close ups of spiders and such. But there was no scope and Clarence wore rubber boots and handed us walking sticks. Turns out it was a muddy two mile hike uphill. Good thing I'd worn sturdy shoes. The trail started with a brick path, then quickly turned into sandbagged hills with rope railings. Mix in high humidity, and the result was profuse sweating. Here you see Clarence in profile at the top of the trail, the sun setting over the ocean. Finally, near the viewpoint, Clarence pointed out an elusive macaw in the distance. The hotel rehabilates captive and injured macaws. They have to be taught to socialize with other macaws before they can be let back in the wild. If they can't be released, then their offspring are released. For each bird, the process can take one and a half to two years.
Of course, the next day as we were at our hotel balcony, a macaw posed for us, no hike required.
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