Quepos and Manuel Antonio National Park

Quepos was my next stop after leaving swelteringly hot Jaco (spoiler alert, the heat didn't get much better, if at all haha). My goal was to go to Manuel Antonio National Park, which I'd heard a lot about and, as far as I can tell, is the most popular national park in Costa Rica. I stayed with a Couchsurfing host named Pamela (my first female host in all of my Couchsurfing experience!), and her husband and parents, who were all very nice and welcoming. I had my own room with a private bathroom, which is always a huge bonus when Couchsurfing.

I was originally going to stay in Quepos for two days because I arrived Sunday evening and thought the park was closed on Mondays, so I was just going to hang around in Quepos for the first day. However, it turned out that the park was open on Monday (Pamela's husband, Jorge, had a lot of insider information about the area that helped me out), so I went to the park my first day, and since that was my main objective for that area, I decided to move on to my next location a day early.

Getting to Manuel Antonio from Quepos was very easy. As usual in Costa Rica, the bus schedule was very convenient; buses leave from Quepos to Manuel Antonio about every twenty minutes. Once I was on the bus, it only took about twenty minutes to get to the stop for the park, and then I had to walk about 300 meters to the entrance to the park (for those of you who are imperically-inclined, that is about a quarter of a mile). When I got there and bought my ticket, the park had already been open for over two hours, so it was a little more crowded than I would have liked, but once I got onto the longer, less central trails the crowds thinned a bit.

I saw some great views while I was hiking, and thankfully most of the trails were relatively flat so I didn't have to exert myself too much in the intense heat. It's a neat park because it is directly on the coast, so you have trails that are fully in the forest, but then open up onto magnificent ocean views, and there are two beaches within the park for swimming. Not surprisingly that is where most of the people were, cooling off in the water. To me, the water was too warm to be refreshing, and since I had just spent the week in Jaco swimming pretty much all the time that wasn't my main focus while I was at Manuel Antonio. I also spotted lots of wildlife, including a sloth, various birds, raccoons, and tons of monkeys! I had heard about how the monkeys have gotten very smart and will steal food from visitors, even unzipping backpacks to get it out. Luckily that didn't happen to me, but I did see two raccoons snatch some bananas from someone's bag on the beach. Also, at one point I made the mistake of opening up a granola bar right down the trail from where I had just seen a group of monkeys, and before I knew it they were surrounding me begging for my food. It was cool to have the monkeys get that close to me, but also a little sad that they are so habituated to humans that they will do that. Luckily I was able to successfully finish my snack without having any of it stolen. Some other hikers came down the trail as the monkeys were crowding around me, and one of the monkeys stole a travel-size pack of tissues from one of the hikers' backpacks. It scurried away onto a perch, and very dexterously opened the pack and removed the tissues one by one in hopes that one of them would be edible, but it discarded them all and flung them on the ground.

All told, I'm pretty sure I hiked every trail in the park. Something I've noticed about all of the National Parks/Reserves I've been to in Costa Rica is that they are smaller than I expect them to be. I suppose that makes sense though, because my frame of reference is the United States, which has some huge parks, but also is a much larger country. Here are the picture highlights of my trip through the park:

One of the main trails in the park

Beautiful ocean view from one of the trails

Cool orange and purple crab

Another peak at the ocean while hiking through the forest

Playa Gemelas (Twins Beach. How appropriate for me!)

The first monkey to get very close to me. This one wasn't after food, it was just so used to people that it barely seemed to notice I was there. 

This monkey was also totally chill about the fact that there were people around

A beautiful overlook at the end of a trail. I think it was called Puerto Escondido (Hidden Port)

More cute lounging monkeys! All of the ones I saw were this variety, White-Faced Capuchins

Playa Manuel Antonio, the more popular of the two beaches in the park

Playa Manuel Antonio

The other beach, Playa Espadilla

At the end of Playa Espadilla

Playa Espadilla

Beautiful ocean view from the Punta Catedral Trail (Cathedral Point), my favorite hike of the day

Another view from Punta Catedral

These are a few of the rascals who tried to steal my food

...and a few more. One of these is snacking on a frog (it was a little gross to watch while I was eating)

An agouti! I've seen them before, but they're just so darn cute, I had to take a picture.

I had a great time hiking through the park, saw some amazing sites, and I'm really glad I went. However, my general impression was that the park was a bit too touristy for my liking when I go to enjoy nature. Since it is such a popular park, there were areas that were filled with people, and it definitely felt like a tourist attraction most of the time. Despite that though, there were a few trails that were much less traveled, and those were my favorites. I like when I can walk for a while without seeing any other people. It makes me feel like I'm more a part of nature.

I hope you enjoyed this brief tour of my time in Manuel Antonio National Park. If you want to see some more wildlife and missed my previous posts about it, check out Wildlife and Plants of Costa ,Rica: Caribbean Edition, and Jaco, Carara National Park and Tarcoles Bridge. Hasta luego!

(P.S. I apologize if the ratio of the pictures looks a little off. I've been noticing that some of them look really off, and I'm trying to figure out why it's happening and how to fix it, but a solution is eluding me. If anyone knows anything about Blogger and knows how to help, let me know. Gracias!)