Weekend Adventure - Manuel Antonio

So, this weekend's trip was to Manuel Antonio, a wildlife park to the east of Jaco. I went with some friends from School of the world - Kerry, Cara, and Susan. Our adventure started bright and early at 5:30 so we could make it to the bus stop in time for the 6:00 bus. At this point I would like to make a quick aside to discuss an important Costa Rican phrase, "la hora Tica", which means "Costa Rican time." Let's just say that in Costa Rica (and I believe all of Central America), it's no problem to be late. So, back to the story - our bus arrived at 6:00 "la hora Tica", ie approximately 6:55. I definitely wish I'd known and could have had that extra hour of sleep!

We got to Manuel Antonio around 9 or so. We ended up paying $20 apiece to get a tour guide, which was a bit expensive but well worth it. We would just be walking along and our guide would point at some fuzzy thing through the trees and then point the telescope there and we'd see a sloth, some cicadas, a tree frog, some monkeys, or even a toucan. We could even take pictures through the telescope, so I got some great closeups (pictures below). If not for him we would have seen basically nothing.

After the tour, we went to the beach and relaxed a bit. This was probably the highlight of the tour because there were a bunch of white-faced monkeys over there. We saw some run over to someone's picnic and steal a bag of cheetos and some other food. Hi-larious! (especially because it wasn't happening to me).

We had a bit of a scare at the end of the day, because we all fell asleep on the bus, and when I woke up I was afraid that we'd missed our stop. Luckily we made it back safe and sound, but exhausted.

Pics are below. Enjoy!

Howler monkey through the spy scope

Costa Rican toucan

"Jesus Lizard" (so called because it can walk on water) through the spy scope

White-faced monkeys enjoying some stolen chips

White-faced monkeys inspecting some more stolen food