[Costa Rica Honeymoon] [Day 6] Manuel Antonio National Park

Manuel Antonio National Park
Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio
Puerto Quepos 6350, Costa Rica
http://www.manuelantoniopark.com


I went on hiatus for 3 weeks.  I took me a while to get used to the new working schedule of waking up at 5am and working 10 hours day.  So now I am back to write some more.

I was really looking forward to visiting Manuel Antonio National Park because I read that there are monkeys everywhere.  For those of you who do no know, monkey is my favorite animal.  I took SOOOOO many pictures on this tour.  Get ready to see LOTS OF animals....



People from our tour group stayed at 3 different hotels near the national park.  We took the bus to this hotel to pick up the last group of people and started walking toward the national park.  The national park is only 5 minutes walk from this cute little hotel.




Our tour guide quickly spotted a group of bats on a tree.  What bats?  It took me such a long time to finally see them.  Those tour guides in Costa Rica all have really good eyes.



Yeah we are here!



There were animals around us EVERYWHERE.  We just had to keep our eyes open for them.  We found a sleeping frog on a leaf.



Welcome to the jungle!



Spider making web.



Crab crawling on a tree.



Different kind of crab crawling near some water.



First sloth we saw of the day.  Then we saw maybe 20 more after that.



The mushrooms looked like they taste good, but I didn't dare to try.



Raccoon is so cute.  I wish they don't have rabies and not so crazy & mean so I can keep one for a pet.



Big lizard was trying to get so tools to build a house.



Another big one just hanging out under the tree in the shade, waiting for that other one to do all the work.



After hiking through the jungle, we reached the beach.  The national park beach is much much nicer and cleaner than the public beach in town.



I don't know how to swim, but still went into the water with Dr. P.  The warm sun and cold water felt so good.  Little waves were fun, but big waves were really scary.  I drank a lot of salty ocean water because the stupid big waves.



I love this picture because my arms have not looked this skinny in years.  The point is... you just need the right angle.  haha.....



Lots of hermit crabs on the beach.  We had to be careful not to step on them.



After hanging out at the beach for an hour or so, we decided to go exploring the rest of the national park a little.



We saw this cute sloth trying to get to another tree.



She was soooooo slow but so adorably cute.  I caught her face in this picture!



As we were hiking, I tried to take a picture of Dr. P.  He gave me this dorky pose and expression on his face.  I was like, "What are you doing?"



He answered (with very very slow movement), "Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii aaaaaaaaaaaaaammmm aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa slooooooooooooooooth."  What a dork!  haha....



We hiked and hiked into the jungle, but so far we haven't spotted any monkey.  So I thought, maybe I could call the monkey?  I went "wooooo wooooo woooo" like how I imagine a monkey sounds like.  To our surprise, we heard a call back!  That got me so excited.  I kept on going "woooo woooo woooo" and walking toward where the noise came from.  The "monkey" kept on calling back to me.  Then Dr. P was the "monkey".  It was another hiker thinking I was the "monkey".  haha....  That was a really funny moment when we all realized what just happened.



We kept on climbing up.  The ocean looked beautiful from up there.



Dr. P looked so small standing next to this giant tree.



We hiked back to the beach.  Then.... MONKEYS!  We finally saw some monkeys!  Sadly, the monkeys were eating chocolate chip cookies that some tourists fed them.  The people who fed them were Spanish speaking mom and kids.  A European tourist asked them to stop and they wouldn't.  He got so mad and started yelling "you know you are killing them?"  He ran to get the security guards, but by the time the guard came, they already gave the monkeys the whole bag of cookies.  I wish people wouldn't do stupid thing like that to wild animals.



And here came the raccoon hoping to get some food, too.  We found out that monkey and raccoon have different tactic to get food from people.  Monkey is sneaky.  They'll go up to people who's napping on the beach and steal their food/water.  Some even tried to open people's zipper on backpacks.  Raccoon is more direct.  They just go straight up to people and grab (or rob) their food/water/bag.



We stayed with the monkeys for a long time.  I just love watching them.



This was how close we were to them.



Dad, mom, and a baby monkey.  The mom was busy eating cookies.  Baby just stayed on mom's back sucking his fingers.  Others tried to come to get the cookies.  Dad stayed with them and tried to keep other monkeys away from them.



Here is a short video of the loving family.



The little baby was soooo adorable.



He tried to stick his tongue out at us.  haha....



On our way back to the exit, we saw more monkeys.  Those monkeys were doing what they were supposed to do, eating seeds/fruits from trees.



I don't think the monkeys here care about the people too much.  They get pretty close to people.



The only time they show teeth and hiss is when people get too close to baby monkeys.  The adults are all very protective of the babies.

We love this national park.  Lots and lots of animals to see and find.  The monkeys were soooo cute.  I wish I could take one http://www.eileenlikestoeat.com.  Wait, I already have a big monkey at http://www.eileenlikestoeat.com.  haha.....

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