After a rather long delay, I’m finally ready with my pictures from the second leg of our trip: Manuel Antonio. Manuel Antonio is THE most touristy part of Costa Rica. That is, it is rather tiny and receives a large number of tourists, so it can almost be a bit too Hawaii-like in that respect.Regardless, it was a fabulous destination and I could have stayed there MUCH longer (when checking out on our last day, the concierge feigned disappointment and said ‘Leaving? Oh no! Why?’ to which I replied ‘No more money!’).

While in Costa Rica we stayed at Tulemar, which had it’s own private beach (a rarity in Manuel Antonio). We had a small bungalow perched on the hillside, here’s the view outside a window:

 

Unfortunately the room had no balcony, but it made up for it with the private beach.  Needless to say we spent a good portion of our time there:

        

The beach had a small café and bar, so while the kids swam in the water, Rob and I would drink pina coladas relaxing on our beach chairs. What can I say, it was rough.

The water was delightfully warm, in fact, there were a couple of times we wanted it to be a little cooler, just to give us a bit more relief from the heat! We also took a couple of kayaks and crossed the bay to a tiny beach. Cole and I managed to capsize our kayak 50 feet from shore. It was not easy flipping that thing over. Thankfully we had on life vests.

The weather in Manuel Antonio was much warmer than Arenal, by about 10-15 degrees. On our first night, the sky just cracked open and it POURED. I frantically checked the weather forecast on my phone to see if we had just headed into a ‘wet spell’. The weather service predicted thunderstorms every day until our departure, however, it never rained again after that night and I have now learned not to freak out when my phone’s weather app has rain in the forecast (the weather forecast continued to predict thunderstorms during our entire stay).

In the beginning we stuck to the beach. The kids did some boogie boarding

and built sand ‘towns’ for these hermit crabs that they would corral:

There were loads of these hermit crabs on the beach at night (the beach was literally crawling with them), but during the day these guys tended to hang out in fewer numbers.

One of our first outings was to go Manuel Antonio Park. It’s a fairly small park but is loaded with animals. Here are a few of the highlights:

 

 

 

and lots more that I didn’t get pictures of.  By the way, the beaches at the park were spectacular, but the facilities were dismal so we decided to forgo a swim and head back to our hotel to cool off.

Manuel Antonio park beach:

The day we went to the park it was sizzling. We walked out drooping at 12 noon and I thought we would all melt onto the pavement. We mercifully found a little hole in the wall outside the park exit selling smoothies.

There are many butterfly/frog farms in costa rica. They all looked so hokey but we did end up going to one in Manuel Antonio that is actually a preserve. This means they employ naturalists and the animals are in their natural habitats rather than being in a terrarium (except for the caimans and crocodiles, they were definitely in their own separate enclosure!). The preserve had a butterfly garden with hundreds of blue morphos fluttering around. These butterflies are rather large – about 4 inches across – and bright bright blue. They are constantly moving and don’t stay in one place for long making it almost impossible to photograph one! We’ll just have to make do with this one:

(these are actually two blue morphos, one has it’s wings closed).

In their science room, they had cases of some of the butterflies found in Costa Rica. We saw many of these on our hikes in the parks, including the brilliant blue butterfly 3rd row on the left (I didn’t believe it was a butterfly when I first saw it, I thought it was a flower that had fallen down from a tree, lol):

 

 

 

On our last night in Manuel Antonio (and Costa Rica) we went back to the preserve to do a night hike. The reason for this was to see the frogs, all of whom are nocturnal, except for poison dart frogs. It took a while, but we saw several.

A red-eyed tree frog:

     

Rob and I have a thing for red-eyed tree frogs, so needless to say, we were beyond thrilled to spot several of them (we had a guide of course) in addition to little baby red-eyed tree frogs!

A bull nosed frog:

 

 

Our guide’s main method of finding the frogs was to mimic their call. If a frog was nearby it would make an answering call and then he would search for it with his flashlight.

On the recommendation of a friend, we decided to try zip lining. Now, Cole and I are no friend of heights. I was told and had read that this particular zipline – Canopy Tours, was THE most kid friendly zipline in Costa Rica. In our group was a pair of five year old twins along with their mom and 84 year old grandparents, and these were no Iron man triathletes.  If they could do it, surely I could do it.   Well, after all that worrying, it turned out to be a blast!  Zipping through the jungle trees was amazing, and the heights were not that bad. Even the grandparents had fun.

Before the zipline:

 

Lena had the most fun of all, in fact, she went first on the zipline. No fear, mom and dad!

 

 

Before we left to Costa Rica, we were told that we would be practically tripping over monkeys and hearing the screeches of howler monkeys all day long. The first day, no monkeys. Second day,  no monkeys and definitely no screeching. Then, after about three days there, we happened upon a discovery at Tulemar. We found the monkey highway, that is, a section of their property where a troop of white-faced capuchins would travel across the main road down to the beach twice  a day – noon and early evening.  We saw lots of spectacular leaps, including by mothers with babies clinging onto their backs.  The next day we had a happy accident – while getting lost driving around we happened upon an enormous mango tree that nourished a family of squirrel monkeys. They are just so incredible cute, not to mention cheeky! They didn’t seem fazed by our happy snapping and oohing and aahing at close range. Of course, this mango tree was situated across from several apartment buildings.

 

 

 

A baby squirrel monkey on it’s mother’s back (eating mango, funny little fellow):

 

A squirrel monkey in action:

 

The screeching? Never heard nor saw a single howler monkey in Manuel Antonio, not even in the park. I think we are the only ones ever to go to Costa Rica and not have that experience!

Robert says: “In Manual Antonio the guide told me that we were hearing howlers at one point, but also said that the howl can carry up to 3 miles.”

 

Tropical fruit stands were found every where we went. Delicious!

 

I’ll end this post with a picture of Cole and Rob in our bungalow, relaxing before a busy day of fun and sun: