Trips about Parks
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.
Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica
Please see the first post on Costa Rica for important details about this post.
At the time we were in Puerto Viejo, the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge was all private land with trails leading through it and which almost required a guide due to the lack of signs. It seems that as of 2008, the refuge is now a national wildlife refuge with an entrance fee and (hopefully) better maintained trails. In any case, we hired a guide who was absolutely amazing (his name is Tino), could find birds by the sounds they made, and had probably memorized just about every inch of that refuge.
The diversity of wildlife in the refuge was extraordinary. Birds were everywhere and I was even able to get several photographs of hummingbirds:
Besides birds we saw poisonous frogs and snakes, sand crabs, howler monkeys, and interesting mushrooms:
Rincón de la Vieja National Park
Please see the first post on Costa Rica for important details about this post.
Not too far from Liberia is Rincón de la Vieja National Park - one of the more remote parks in Costa Rica. After driving over 20 km of gravel road, one reaches a small parking lot with a ranger station and a trail map, from where you can hike to several different places. One of the nicer areas is supposedly some waterfalls, but unfortunately halfway to the waterfalls it started pouring and the trails flooded very quickly.
However, right at the beginning of the trial we started hearing an increasing number of rustling noises. In a few minutes we watched a whole group of coatis (related to raccoons) cross the trail and field, including several young coatis. Here's some of them:
We finally got back to the car completely soaked, but luckily with nothing damaged.
Monteverde, Costa Rica
Please see the first post on Costa Rica for important details about this post.
Our next stop was Monteverde - home of cloud forests. We had wanted to go to two places - the Monteverde Cloud Forest and the Skywalk - a tour along suspended platforms through the canopy levels. On our first day there, we decided to go the cloud forest, but got lost and ended up hiking through the Eternal Children's Forest - a forest that was bought using funds donated by children from around the world. The forest is slighly below cloud forest level, but it was still nice to go through there:
We did stop by the actual cloud forest, but only near the entrance as it was already late in the day. Still, there were several hummingbird feeders there attracting a large number of hummingbirds:
The next day we went on the Skywalk. The Skywalk is part of a larger facility that also offers things like zip lines - essentially an amusement park-like ride where one is suspended on a wire and goes from platform to platform through the top of the forest. You apparently don't get to see much, but I've heard its fun. The Skywalk, on the other hand, is a series of over 10 bridges through different parts of the forest canopy and is actually quite interesting.
One of the reasons many people come to Monteverde is to see the Resplendent Quetzal, an amazingly beautiful bird only found in certain areas. Unfortunately for bird watchers, the quetzal is mostly green and thus not always easy to spot among the leaves. On our trip though, I managed to spot one, talked to the tour guide leading a group just ahead of us, who was extraordinarily thankful when we pointed it out to him and it gave everyone in the group a chance to see the quetzal (though not a great view). The one I had spotted was a female and the tour guide was able to spot the male, who was even more carefully hidden than the female. Unfortunately I couldn't really get any decent photographs of him, though this was remedied somewhat later in the trip.
California
One benefit of getting accepted to many graduate schools is the opportunity to travel to all of them at the graduate schools' expense. I decided to combine my trips to UC Davis and Caltech and Lydia, my girlfriend at the time, came with me. This was my first trip to California, and the first time I saw the Pacific Coast while in the US.
We started off our trip in San Francisco, where we wandered around the piers and watched the sun set over the bay. The following day, we rented a car and drove up the coast to Pt. Reyes National Seashore, although the park itself was closed. We followed this up with visits to the Armstrong Redwood State Preserve, Napa/Sonama counties, before finally making it to UC Davis for two nights.
After visiting Davis, we flew down to LA, where we spent time at Caltech and visiting some of Lydia's friends in the area before finally making our way back to the east coast. I've included some of the pictures from the trip, although many were lost due to some hardware issues.
