Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

Please see the first post on Costa Rica for important details about this post.

Manuel Antonio is one of the most popular parks in Costa Rica. This is good because the trails are well maintained and the good facilities. It's bad because of the number of people and the fact that the wildlife is completely not afraid of humans. The national park is definitely known for its 3 beautiful beaches that are better maintained than the one in Manuel Antonio. Upon entering, the first beach is Playa Espadilla Sur, beautiful but not that popular:

Further into the park is the most popular beach, Playa Manuel Antonio, which is sheltered and thus has calm water:

And finally, there's Playa Punto Escondido, where iguanas like to spend as much time as humans:

Supposedly, one of the best ways to see things at such a park is to use a guide. However, we were better at spotting animals than our guide and the animals are generally so plentiful that its hard to miss them. Sloths are one of the trickier animals to spot, but we were lucky enough to find this one climbing up from the ground:

Another common animal is the capuchin or white-faced monkey. Those were the easiest to spot as they were simply everywhere:

Among the more rare larger animals was this anteater I spotted:

Finally, there are plenty of smaller creatures everywhere. Among the more prevalent kinds are land crabs and iguanas, as well as weird grasshoppers:

All in all, Manuel Antonio was interesting, but it felt more like a zoo than a real park. Animals were just too plentiful and too unafraid of humans.