Manuel Antonio National Park & Cano Island National Park, Costa Rica
Today we started our first full day of a week-long trip on board the Sea Voyager and let me tell what a start we had. It was incredible; we got our first look at sloths, monkeys, agouties, iguanas, and our first snorkeling as well, but lets start with the morning.
This morning we awoke at anchor in front of a beautiful sandy beach with a nice green tropical rain forest as background. This is a protected area known as Manuel Antonio National Park, which is considered by some as one of the crown jewels of the national park system of Costa Rica not only for its beautiful scenery, but also for its wild life, easily seen. And today we all witnessed this truth, because in less than an hour, we were already watching our second sloth of the day with a baby, and by the end of the walk, we had spotted one two-toed sloth, about seven three-toed sloths, howler monkeys, white throated capuchin monkeys, two central American agouties, several iguanas, bats, and birds as well. The reason for all this is that the park is the smallest of all the national parks in the country. So small that it has been proven to be not big enough for large animals, specially large predators such as jaguars that usually keep under control the growth of the population of medium side mammals. So these go into a demographic explosion and become easy to see because of their numbers.
So after our morning activities, and once we had everybody on board, we picked up the anchor and made our way to another national park, this time an island named Caño Island for our first snorkeling of the trip. Some beach time was had, but before we got there, we got a glimpse of Pan tropical spotted dolphins and some sea turtles that joined us in our navigation over mid-day to the island.
Once anchored, we jumped into the Zodiacs for what turned out to be a great place to snorkel. We saw different species of trigger fish, damsel fish, surgeon fish and some of us got to see a white tipped reef shark.
So not a bad start, don’t you think?
Today we started our first full day of a week-long trip on board the Sea Voyager and let me tell what a start we had. It was incredible; we got our first look at sloths, monkeys, agouties, iguanas, and our first snorkeling as well, but lets start with the morning.
This morning we awoke at anchor in front of a beautiful sandy beach with a nice green tropical rain forest as background. This is a protected area known as Manuel Antonio National Park, which is considered by some as one of the crown jewels of the national park system of Costa Rica not only for its beautiful scenery, but also for its wild life, easily seen. And today we all witnessed this truth, because in less than an hour, we were already watching our second sloth of the day with a baby, and by the end of the walk, we had spotted one two-toed sloth, about seven three-toed sloths, howler monkeys, white throated capuchin monkeys, two central American agouties, several iguanas, bats, and birds as well. The reason for all this is that the park is the smallest of all the national parks in the country. So small that it has been proven to be not big enough for large animals, specially large predators such as jaguars that usually keep under control the growth of the population of medium side mammals. So these go into a demographic explosion and become easy to see because of their numbers.
So after our morning activities, and once we had everybody on board, we picked up the anchor and made our way to another national park, this time an island named Caño Island for our first snorkeling of the trip. Some beach time was had, but before we got there, we got a glimpse of Pan tropical spotted dolphins and some sea turtles that joined us in our navigation over mid-day to the island.
Once anchored, we jumped into the Zodiacs for what turned out to be a great place to snorkel. We saw different species of trigger fish, damsel fish, surgeon fish and some of us got to see a white tipped reef shark.
So not a bad start, don’t you think?
