Manuel Antonio National Park & Curu Wild life Refuge
Our first day of the exploration on the Neotropics of Costa Rica and Panama, and what a day we had for a start, it was an incredible day.
We awoke in the morning anchored at Manuel Antonio National Park in the central Pacific Coast of Costa Rica and what is known for being one of the best parks to see wildlife up close and personal - especially medium sized mammals since the place is one of the smallest national parks of Costa Rica. It is too small to have large animals including what are known as Alfa predators that are usually the ones that are controlling the growth of the medium sized mammal populations. So lacking Alfa predators the medium sized mammals like monkeys and sloths go into a demographic explosion and today we had the living proof of this and it was up and close. We had great looks of white-throated capuchin monkeys, mantled howler monkeys, red-backed squirrel monkeys, Central American agoutis, the three-toed sloth and two-toed sloth. And that was just for the morning.
For the afternoon the ship was repositioned to the northern part of the country to Nicoya Peninsula. We got to explore the most endangered tropical forest in the world, the tropical dry forest which faces a really strong dry season where there is very little rain and the flora and fauna have evolved to this dry condition. Here we got to see more howler monkeys and white-throated capuchins plus a lot of typical birds of the ecosystem like black-headed trogon, turquoise-browed motmot, yellow-napped parrot and many other residents of the tropical dry forest.
Not a bad day to start the trip!
Our first day of the exploration on the Neotropics of Costa Rica and Panama, and what a day we had for a start, it was an incredible day.
We awoke in the morning anchored at Manuel Antonio National Park in the central Pacific Coast of Costa Rica and what is known for being one of the best parks to see wildlife up close and personal - especially medium sized mammals since the place is one of the smallest national parks of Costa Rica. It is too small to have large animals including what are known as Alfa predators that are usually the ones that are controlling the growth of the medium sized mammal populations. So lacking Alfa predators the medium sized mammals like monkeys and sloths go into a demographic explosion and today we had the living proof of this and it was up and close. We had great looks of white-throated capuchin monkeys, mantled howler monkeys, red-backed squirrel monkeys, Central American agoutis, the three-toed sloth and two-toed sloth. And that was just for the morning.
For the afternoon the ship was repositioned to the northern part of the country to Nicoya Peninsula. We got to explore the most endangered tropical forest in the world, the tropical dry forest which faces a really strong dry season where there is very little rain and the flora and fauna have evolved to this dry condition. Here we got to see more howler monkeys and white-throated capuchins plus a lot of typical birds of the ecosystem like black-headed trogon, turquoise-browed motmot, yellow-napped parrot and many other residents of the tropical dry forest.
Not a bad day to start the trip!
