After a good night sleep we once again woke up right as our alarms rang. Today was a day we had been looking very forward to. It was day 3 and we were going to Manuel Antonio National Park. Doing nothing but our best to spot animals, insects and trying to capture it all with our cameras. We had a bucket list of animals: all 3 types of monkeys in that area, sloths, macaw, green frogs and iguanas.
We packed up the rest of our stuff and had decided to walk the 4 kilometers we had. We were both feeling good and fresh and was ready for whatever the day would bring. Few minutes in to the walk Ditte spotted our very first couple of Macaws sitting in the treetops in the distance. Shortly after we got our very first raindrops and it soon started to rain a bit heavier. At a nearby restaurant we saw a whole bunch of Squirrel Monkeys.
We arrived to the National Park and went straight into the que for the entrance at 7 AM. At the entrance everybody had their backpacks etc. searched as food, single use plastics etc. isn’t allowed in. For some reason we both forgot we had som nuts in the backpack, so those we had to throw out. Slightly embarrassed as we totally forgot they were there, we went in and went straight in to looking for animals and insects.
Surprised by how few people were at the entrance to the park, we quickly went down one of the sidewalks and soon after Ditte spotted the first animal a ???. Soon after we saw our first sloth very high up – we were super excited and on the same time slightly disappointed as we couldn’t really see it clearly. The day went by quickly and before we knew it, it was lunch time. We bought some lunch at the little cafe they had in the park, which was super nice. We continued to spot animals and managed to spot several different animals in the park, such as Iguanas, monkeys, coatis and much more.
In the evening when we got back to the hostel, we were very sore between our butt cheeks and thighs from being humid and moist all the time as well as from the saltwater we had been swimming in the last couple of days. And then it suddenly hit us as a huge surpirise, that there was no easy way to get a Bus from Manuel Antonio to Puerto Jimenez, which was our next stop. We asked hostels, locals, Google and nobody really knew a good way to get us to Puerto Jimenez by bus. So we went to bed a bit frustrated not really knowing what to do, but agreed that what we had to do was to catch a bus to Quepos first and then reevaluate our possibilities.
