23/05/2025
Manuel Antonio - the first stop on our Costa Rica Adventure and the most popular of the 30 national parks in the country. We were there for 2 nights and packed soo much in!
Day 1 - 'Vamos a la playa!' 🏖straight to the beach for our first view of the Pacific. Followed by an incredibly atmospheric Mangroves nightime boat tour. As the lightening lit up the sky we saw Boa Constrictors, American Crocodiles, 4 sloths, and more stunning birds & lizards than you can imagine!
Day 2 - Straight into with a morning guided walk in the national park. All the pictures are exactly what we could see with our own eyes, some were taken through the spotting scope but this is what we saw. The guide was so knowledgeable and engaging and with incredible eyes they could spot things we would have just walked straight past.
The afternoon was spent on one of the top 25 best beaches in the world (as voted by Tripadvisor), followed by sun-downers high up over looking the stunning bay at El Avion bar (with a genuine CIA airplane with links to the Iran Contra Affair - google it!)
I literally don't have enough space to list all the animals we saw but here's a few highlights in those 2.5 days… Yellow Throated Toucan, 6 Sloths (both 2 and 3 toed), a rare Green & Black Poison Dart Frog, Jesus Christ lizards, Squirrel Monkeys and White Face Capuchin Monkeys (in the forest, and then later trying to raid the kitchen of the bar!), 2 kinds of Boa Constrictor, 3x Pigmy Kingfishers, a huge Iguana, Blue Land Crabs, and randomly a deer in the forest (not what we were expecting!) etc etc etc
Our amazing group was already starting to feel like a bunch of close friends
And that was just the first 60 hours of the trip!
Next up Monte Verde Cloud Forest
