Manuel Antonio is a national park here in Costa Rica and is a tourist destination. It is about 2 1/2 hours from where we live. We were told to arrive there by 10 so that when we entered the park we could see the monkeys. We managed to arrive on time and headed into the park. Mind you, we have 4 kids, lunch, beach gear, and a 3 year old who wanted to be carried. You hike through the park to get to the beach and throughout the hike you are supposed to be able to see lots of monkeys, sloths, bugs, raccoons, and probably a million different kinds of snakes if I had to guess. It is a cleared path, but you are literally in the middle of the jungle where jungle meets beach and along the way a pond of saltwater crocodiles.
We made our way through the park and to the beach and didn't see but one baby sloth. I would have never seen it if someone else had not pointed it out. There were no monkeys eating or wandering around. Huge bummer to the kids. Logan was expecting to see another Vomit Inducing Monkey who ate his puke over and over. So, yes, he was rather disappointed.
With a view like this, who could be upset about no monkeys hanging from a tree. I am pretty sure you can tell from the photos there weren't any huge disappointments.
{there was absolutely no shade at the this beach...
unless you were going to hang out with the
families of raccoons}
She would rather play in the sand and haul water
to where she is playing than get in the water.
Starting the foundation of their
sandcastle
Do I need any words for this?
{just wanted to throw a picture in of
my handsome hubby}
The kids lasted about 4 minutes building the
sandcastle. This was as much of a masterpiece
as David and I could do.
People had mentioned that there were raccoons near the beach, but they failed to mention that they are very aggressive, persistent, and tons of them. We made our way across the beach, staking out a spot to set up all the gear and make peanut butter sandwiches. We saw people shooing raccoons away from their stuff, so we thought we would just get closer to the water, out in the beating sun, and slather sunscreen on constantly. Well, that game plan didn't work. David got the beach mat laid out, my hands are still full of things, Dad sets one bag down...and BINGO for the raccoon. He is trying to get in the two bags that have been set down. Well, he succeeded with the bag with our bread for lunch. So, we had enough bread for the kids to have half sandwiches and I think a couple of adults had a few crumbs of bread with spoonfuls of peanut butter and jelly. If that wasn't enough, they still kept trying to get in our things. There were not just a few of them, there were families of them everywhere and into everyone's things. They eventually ran us off the beach.
Funny thing is we left the beach, walked out of the park, sat in a flat bottom boat amongst crocodiles. I literally sat in a boat that moved 2 feet, from one sandy area to another sandy area, so that I would not have to walk through "croc water," and I paid to do this. I thought they were going to paddle me around to the road where I needed to get out, but nope, we just moved two feet and we were done...I had to walk the rest of the way hauling a 3 year old and beach gear. I laugh now....I didn't then : ). We all get loaded into the car and then see where we came out of the park there is a public beach (free, with exception of $2 parking) that looks great, close to the road for easy access and what do you know...we walked through the entire park and no monkeys only to see one walking around outside the park at the street!
No comments :
Post a Comment