Slowly going insane: Tour of Manuel Antonio Park

[Note: I know that the blogger program cuts off the edge of the photos on the right side, but I don't know how to fix this. If you want to view the photos in a better frame, you can click on any photo and the photo wheel will pop up, allowing for larger screen viewing. Two of the photos of the sunset below were taken with the panoramic setting, and the only way you can properly view the images is through the photo wheel.]

Wednesday morning started out bright and early with a guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park. Our tour guides picked us up from the hotel and we drove about 20 minutes south to the park entrance. For our excursion, our family was paired with two young women on vacation from Canada and was led by our guide, Brian.

Manuel Antonio is Costa Rica's smallest national park, but one of the country's most popular. The park is known for its geographic diversity (jungle and beaches) as well as the wide range of animals that live within its boundaries. The sign below shows the three different types of monkeys that live within the park - Squirrel, Howler, and Capuchin. We were lucky enough during our tour to see all three types of monkeys!

Along with hundreds of other tourists, we walked along the dirt and gravel tray through the jungle, stopping along the way to view plants and animals. We could see many of the plants and animals with the naked eye, though Brian definitely pointed out lots of things that he could see or hear, but that we would have missed due to our inexperience. I thought the plant below had amazing shapes and colors.

When Brian wanted to show us an close-up view, he would set up his tripod and telescope and let us all look through the lens. I was especially impressed that he was able to take photos with all of our cameras through the lens so that we would have detailed photos as souvenirs from the tour. Most of the photos were taken with either Scott's iPhone or the point and shoot camera, as my camera was temporarily broken due to issues from the rain the day before. I think the quality is amazing.

Look at the detail of these spiders on the web! Notice the huge spider in the center, and the smaller spider adjacent and on top of the larger one. Do you know which is the male and which is the female?

The female spider is the larger of the two! Below is a photo of a squirrel monkey. This was the first, and only, time we saw squirrel monkeys during our trip to Costa Rica. We also saw howler and capuchin monkeys later during our walk.

There is a beautiful multi-colored grasshopper below. Brian called this one a Murano glass grasshopper, so named because the different colors look similar to the colorful Murano glass that is made in Italy.

Green lizard.

The turn-around point of the tour was this gorgeous beach! We only spent 15 minutes here, but it was fun to watch local families and tourists mixing together on the beach.

Brian found several sloths hanging out on the trees that bordered the sand and jungle areas.

We saw more animals than depicted here, but this gives a good overview. Our tour of the park was completely fascinating! It was amazing to have the opportunity to view so many different animals, and to enjoy learning from Brian's biological and historical descriptions as we viewed them. Brian was very knowledgable and well-traveled, probably the best tour guide we had during our trip.

After the tour company dropped us off at our hotel, we were treated to this lovely creature just outside of our room door. I know the large iguanas were probably some of the more harmless animals we encountered on this trip, but for some reason they freaked me out. The kids couldn't stop laughing at me every time we encountered one of these guys and I squealed with disgust.

We decided to have lunch at the pool-side restaurant on the hotel grounds. Not too bad of a lunchtime view!

After a delicious lunch, we spent the rest of the day enjoying the glorious sunshine. Our first stop was the infiniti pool next to the restaurant where we ate lunch. Scott and Amelia are enjoying the view from the ledge of the pool, looking out towards the ocean.

Later we ventured down to the private beach that was located onsite. There were complimentary chairs, towels, and beach toys for guests to use down on the beach. This turned out to the best day for wave-riding (later in the week it got too rough), and Amelia, Scott, and Amelia all took turns riding the waves in.

Amelia and Scott are in the photo below.

To wrap up what had been a near-perfect and exhilarating day, we ventured offsite to enjoy dinner at Ronny's Place. Ronny's Place is apparently known for good food, but perhaps more so for its fabulous location for viewing the sunset. We enjoyed a drink first at the picnic tables overlooking the water, and then later we moved indoors (well, relatively indoors anyway, since none of the restaurant buildings in Costa Rica had enclosed walls and windows all the way around).