Manuel Antonio National Park
We decided to kick off our first full day with a guided tour of the National Park. We were lucky that our hotel booked an early shuttle for us, because even though we got there before 7:30 in the morning, we waited in a line that was about 70 yards long. We went with a couple from California that was staying in our hotel as well. Our guide, Karen, was from the nearby town of Quepos, and she has been a guide for 10 years. She knew about where to find the animals that lived in the park and how to get a picture through the telescope that she carried with her.
We saw way more animals on the trail than I thought we would: Two different kinds of bats, iguanas, basilisks, sloths, several species of birds, and a crab! Sometimes we were close enough to take pictures on our own, but mostly we took snapshots through the lens of Karen's telescope. Some of the camouflage that these animals have is astounding, too! There is one bird in particular that I can think of that actually nests on the ground, and we could hardly see her even though we were less than 5 feet from her. Unfortunately we didn't see any monkeys in the park, but I didn't expect to; they move a lot more than the animals that we saw.
We got to swim in the ocean today! It was a planned, one-hour stop in the tour, and it was the first time that my dad swam in the Pacific. We headed back through the park with Karen (the other couple decided to stay there for a little longer) and went to the little restaurant where the snack was included in our tour. After having more delicious fruit, we headed back to the hotel to get out of the heat for a little while. We wanted to head for another early dinner so that we could catch the sunset from the hotel pool. From our table, we saw both white face and squirrel monkeys! They came so close that we thought they were going to join us for a little meal of their own.
Unfortunately it was a little too cloudy and we were a little too late to see the sunset, but that didn't stop us from swimming. When we got finished, we stopped by the front desk to set up our activity for the net day: a tour of the Pacific Coast on a catamaran!