Manuel Antonio National Park & Curu Wildlife Refuge
Today we had great day – just the perfect ending for this wonderful week between Panama and Costa Rica and what a ending this was!
We awoke at the beautiful beach of Manuel Antonio National Park located at the central Pacific coast of Costa Rica and what is considered to be one of the smallest protected areas of this country. However, its size is not a good parameter to measure its beauty. Its sandy beaches surrounded with tropical forest make this the right place to start with our morning hikes in search of wildlife. As we headed in to the trail it didn’t take long before our naturalist started talking about and pointing out animals in the forest. We saw long-nosed bats, black iguanas, two toed sloth and three toed sloth (moving), white-nosed coati mundis, and common pauraque nesting right next to the trail and in front of our eyes but unbelievably well camouflaged. But the ones that put up a full show were the white-throated capuchin monkeys (picture), jumping right about our heads screaming, looking at us and some others taking breaks from the tropical heat and very exposed like posing for a photo.
After our hikes it was our time to cool from the heat of the tropics so we went for a dip in the beach of the park to enjoy the warm and beauty of the Pacific ocean one last time.
During lunch the ship was repositioned to the Nicoya Peninsula for our afternoon outing at Curu Wildlife Refuge.
At this place we had a chance to glimpse one of the most endangered tropical forests of all which is the tropical dry forest which is almost gone as well as its unique flora and fauna. In the hikes we had a great chance to increase our list of species, adding to it scarlet macaw, more white-faced capuchin monkeys, turquoise-browed motmot, northern raccoon, crested caracara and some others that we will have a hard time to remember but the important thing is that we had a great day to end our trip.
Today we had great day – just the perfect ending for this wonderful week between Panama and Costa Rica and what a ending this was!
We awoke at the beautiful beach of Manuel Antonio National Park located at the central Pacific coast of Costa Rica and what is considered to be one of the smallest protected areas of this country. However, its size is not a good parameter to measure its beauty. Its sandy beaches surrounded with tropical forest make this the right place to start with our morning hikes in search of wildlife. As we headed in to the trail it didn’t take long before our naturalist started talking about and pointing out animals in the forest. We saw long-nosed bats, black iguanas, two toed sloth and three toed sloth (moving), white-nosed coati mundis, and common pauraque nesting right next to the trail and in front of our eyes but unbelievably well camouflaged. But the ones that put up a full show were the white-throated capuchin monkeys (picture), jumping right about our heads screaming, looking at us and some others taking breaks from the tropical heat and very exposed like posing for a photo.
After our hikes it was our time to cool from the heat of the tropics so we went for a dip in the beach of the park to enjoy the warm and beauty of the Pacific ocean one last time.
During lunch the ship was repositioned to the Nicoya Peninsula for our afternoon outing at Curu Wildlife Refuge.
At this place we had a chance to glimpse one of the most endangered tropical forests of all which is the tropical dry forest which is almost gone as well as its unique flora and fauna. In the hikes we had a great chance to increase our list of species, adding to it scarlet macaw, more white-faced capuchin monkeys, turquoise-browed motmot, northern raccoon, crested caracara and some others that we will have a hard time to remember but the important thing is that we had a great day to end our trip.
