Manuel Antonio National Park
Early this morning we arrived to our first destination of our week’s adventure, at Manuel Antonio National Park. We were pleasantly surprised to find, even before the break of dawn, many of our guests already awake! That’s a good sign! It is always nice to have a group eager to see what is awaiting them.
It was, of course, still very dark at 6:00 am, but slowly as the sun started to emerge from behind “the Talamancas,” the highest mountain range in Costa Rica, we could start to see the silhouette of “the Mogotes” islands, emerging from the blackness of the night. These islands constitute the gateway to Manuel Antonio coming from the sea. Manuel Antonio, it’s such a great place for wildlife!
It was a nice hot sunny morning, and as we walked on the trails, we found out that sections of the path were covered with a carpet of pink flowers from the Tabebuia trees in bloom, almost as if they had purposefully been placed for us to walk on as part of our welcoming party.
Welcoming indeed, because today our walk rewarded us with great sightings of Central American agoutis. Agoutis were particularly active and abundant today, noisily gnawing with their sharp incisors on the hard shelled nuts of palms along the path. We had great sights of the inquisitive and smart White-faced monkeys which even came down from the trees, closer to us, as if to pose for us for close-up pictures. We also saw Crab-eating raccoons, White-nosed coatis, Sac-winged bats, and a few prehistoric looking Basilisk lizards running on their hind legs, as is typical for them, and their cousins the spiny-tailed iguanas.
And what about birds! We had some nice sightings of an un-identified hummingbird nest with a chick on it, bright colored Red-legged honey creepers, Black-hooded ant-shrike singing, endemic Fiery-billed Aracari and the strange looking, and not really that common, Common Potoo.
So overall, and as usual, we were not at all disappointed with this first day visiting Manuel Antonio. It was a big success and we remain eager to what awaits us these next few days of our adventure in Costa Rica and Panama.
