Manuel Antonio National Park

We decided to spend Saturday seeing the amazingly preserved national park of Manuel Antonio. We opted to splurge the $30 for the tour at the recommendation of our peers. It was well worth it because the guide has a trained eye and spotted things we never would have noticed on our own. The added benefit is that he carried a telescope with him and we could take pictures Through the telescope with small digital cameras. We saw one of the most amazing sites before we even entered the park. We saw two sloths feeding together which is a rare thing since sloths usually are solitary creatures. They sleep about 15-20 hours a day and move extremely slowly. It also appears that they always have a smile on their face. I love the way these photos came out through the telescope.



We next saw a small frog and a lizard which our untrained eyes would never have noticed. We even saw a banana spider eating a fly. These are not poisonous despite their intimidating colors.




We saw my favorite animal here in Costa Rica; The titi or Squirrel monkey. They utter a high pitched chirping sound which we thought was a bird at first. There were several of these light gray monkeys leaping around at the very top of the canopy. One paused long enough for me to snap a picture through the telescope while it ate some berries.


We then saw a troup of white faced capuchin monkeys playing lower down in the trees. They moved too quickly to see them with the telescope. They were fun to watch, swinging through the branches with their tails, grabbing fruit and then nimbly jumping around again I tried to take a video but it was hard to keep track of them. .

We continued on our walk and saw African Bees and another species of sloth, this one with two instead of three toes.







We passed the beautiful beach inside the park but by the time the tour was over a storm was coming.






The ocean looked gorgeous in the afternoon before the storm came in for a nighttime downpour.