Today we saw monkeys. Lots of monkeys. My favourite part of the trip so far. They were so cute. We hired a driver just for the 8 of us (Le, Me, 2 kids, Grandi, Poppy and Kanta and Joe). We had him drive us all the way from Punterenas to Manual Antonio National Park, about 2 hours drive from where we docked.
On the way we stopped at a private property that has monkeys you can feed by hand, and we did. Kids loved it. You put a piece of fruit in your hand, close your fingers around it and offer it to the monkeys. The swing, run, climb, hang upside down and gently prise open your fingers. It is just amazing. They are the most adorable little animals.
And there were a number of tame Coati’s there as well. They also ate straight out of your hand. The kids fed the monkeys and the Coati’s. The kids are huge Diego fans (a kids tv show – where a south American kid is an animal rescuer) – so to see real life monkeys and coati’s was just amazing for them.
We then continued in the car until we crossed a bridge over a river that was full of crocodiles. Kids haven’t really seen crocodiles before so that was great too.
A long driver later (Denny napped on the way) we finally got to Manual Antonio National Park in Costa Rica. It has a beach that was good for swimming, we walked about 30 minutes down a path to get there. On the way we saw lots of yellow backed/faced little monkeys, right up close to the path, but they didn’t interact the same way as the white faced monkeys had earlier. We caught up with a private guide, who was showing his clients where hard to see birds were. So we got to take photos of a couple of tropical birds, then he found a sloth as well. Though, it was particularly well camouflaged and really not very active so it was hard to see even if you knew exactly where it was. Le took the best photo she could, we are going to zoom right in to see if we can actually see it good enough to show the kids what they were looking at.
Finally walked down a very steep hill to a small sheltered bay. Lots of volcanic large rocks around the entrance of the bay, big trees overhanging and shading the beach. We took the kids in swimming. It had a very strong pull on the in and out of the waves, and quite a sharp drop off, so we held on tight to the kids. They really enjoyed it. After the last year being above the tropic of cancer and away from beaches, it was really a new experience for them. There were more monkeys that came right down to the beach. Little monkeys.
Denny spotted lots of lizards and a couple of iguanas. On the walk back to the park entrance (an alternate way) we went past another beach and more mangrove area that was home to hundreds of little hermit crabs. The kids have seen hermit crabs on TV but this was their first “hands on” experience. Denny bravely picked up a crab first. Madi found one that was so tiny it was as small as one of her fingernails, but bravely picked it up as well.
After a $1 each ride in a little row boat to cross another mangrove swamp, we got back to the car in time to have a mariachi band start playing right next to us. Kids were exhausted by the heat, so quickly stretched out across us in the van and napped most of the trip back to the boat.
As we had a private driver and went so far from the dock, we had a chance to drive through a number of small towns as well as a couple of more tourist towns. The Costa Rican people that we met and interacted with were very nice and laid back. They had a good sense of humor and smiled a lot. And they weren’t pushy at all, unlike our experiences in Mexico. Costa Rica is definitely on our list of potential winter destinations for Christmas 2011!
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