Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica
A very nice and calm sail let the National Geographic Sea Lion arrive just in time to see the sun rising behind the lush mountains of Manuel Antonio National Park, our last day’s destination. Since we started this voyage, it has been a week of contrasts, Panama Canal and down pours in the rain forest, swarms of seabirds in rocky islands and hundreds of colorful fishes in rocky reefs.
To end our trip, this park is like the icing on the cake. It is known as the jewel of Costa Rica’s national parks. The turquoise water, white sand and green lushness of the rain forest fit perfectly with the quintessential tropical beach paradise. However, as good travelers, we wanted to do more than just lie under a coconut palm tree, so we went off to explore the park with our Naturalist. Two walks were offered: one more exercise-oriented and one more leisurely. Both walks had amazing and breathtaking sights, even for the Naturalist.
As soon as the group started the trail, a coatimundi, a raccoon relative, walked past us not worrying about our presence, digging the ground for hidden food. Then a loud pecking on a tree caught our attention to the canopy of the forest where a red headed pale-billed woodpecker struggled to get its early riser breakfast. However, the most jaw-dropping sight was a mother three-toed sloth carrying in her chest the cutest little fur ball ever, her baby. We all suffered at least for half an hour watching her, moving slowly from a palm tree to a dead branch - which looked like it would not hold her, but did - she arrived safely to her destination tree. All of us could breathe again.
Sloths are not very heavy for their size, an advantage for them, as they try to reach the fragile branches where the tender leaves grow. To be as light as 15 pounds, they cannot have a lot of striated muscle tissue and therefore their moves are slow. Also, they are the mammals with the lowest metabolic rate. Moving fast is an energy-consuming feature. Because they feed on leaves, chasing abilities are not necessary. After this great sighting, a pair of white-faced monkeys decided to get very photogenic and posed for our cameras like movie stars on the red carpet. Truly amazing!
Later in the afternoon, it was time to sail off, and it could not have been better: a calm blue Pacific ocean and a stunning sunset were the perfect gifts for Christmas Eve.
