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We left the mountains of Monteverde and headed to the Pacific coast and the Manuel Antonio National park. The early 6am bus (which was the last bus of the day!), the 7 hour journey and the return to the heat just about finished us off so the rest of the day unfortunately had little merit. Thankfullly the national park the next day more than made up for it.
The next morning we caught the 20 minute bus to the Manuel Antonio National park and found out why it is Costa Rica's most popular. We had to snake through the crowds of tourists at the park gates and on the main very wide trail which leads to the beach. But despite so many people on this first trail we saw a good deal of wildlife in the jungle including sloths and monkeys. The real beauty of the park was found when we left the main path and beach and actually walked a bit further; something that many people didn't do. Off the main path we found many good view points onto beautiful beaches but it was hard going in the humidity. Monkeys jumped from tree to tree above us and at one point dislodged some old branches which fell onto the path next to us - I'm pretty sure they did that on purpose.
After walking most of the trails (it's only a small park) we decided to cool off in the sea. On our way to the beach we amazingly bumped into a Spanish couple we had met on the volcano tour in Granada. They told us that the quietest beach was just next to the busiest one. We eventually found the little cut through to this beach and had it pretty much to ourselves. The water was really warm and a great way to wash off our sweat. After a few minutes we looked back and saw a raccoon approaching our bags. I (Simon) ran out of the water and only just managed to scare it off before it attacked our bags which contained an empty wrapper. We had been too lazy the day before to prepare a packed lunch so around 2pm our hunger forced us out of the park. But in just 5 hours we saw howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys, iguanas of different colours, 4 sloths (or the same two twice), raccoons and many types of birds, spiders and small lizards.
We caught the bus back towards our hostel and got off at a restaurant called the Avion, which was constructed around an old military cargo plane (a C-123 to be precise). It had been intended for the Nicaraguan civil war, 35+ years ago, but when the American public found out that the CIA were secretly selling weapons to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan rebels it somehow ended up as a bar in a restaurant. After some traditional North American food here we headed home via the supermarket to recover our overspend.
Simon
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