Monkey See...

[Saturday, December 6th]

I am sitting by the pool at our condo on the road to Manual Antonio. The dark green forest sits at my feet and spills down to the sea. The ocean softly sparkles and shimmers in silver sequins. It's all to beautiful to photograph and too fleeting to be remembered.

Today was a fulfilling, but tough, day on the trails of Manual Antonio National Park. In the excitement to get going we skipped breakfast and didn't pack any tasty snacks. But hey, this is a national park, there will be snack stands and gift shops, no? No. This is a tropical rain forest, you get monkeys galore, but no gummy bears or churros. We suffered through 5 hours of hiking, stoically and with the determination of Navy Seals. OK, Laura did, I whimpered my way through most of it, and begged for food on a few occasions. Those monkeys are pretty comfortable with people and we had heard they will try to go through your backpack looking for food. But do you think they would offer up a banana to a hungry man on occasion. Stingy monkeys.


The beaches inside the park are just your typical idyllic, and serenely beautiful tropical beaches that you see on postcards and wonder if you will ever get there one day. The park is laced with deep dark trails that wind through the park and drop you off in these quiet coves where waves gently splash the rocks and white sand. Beautiful.

We saw scores of monkeys, a few tree sloths, a pair of bats, lots of butterfly's, and what I think was a marmot. No frogs though, I think they had the day off. For a hefty fee, you can hire a guide to show you where all the wildlife is hiding. We would tend to walk a little slower while passing these guided tours and notice whatever they where noticing. We also would try and notice if they had any food in the backpacks. When in Rome.