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Manuel Antonio

Oct 28, 2017
2 min read

(August 31st - September 4th)

Oh Manuel Antonio, how great a disappointment you turned out to be. We had really been looking forward to this area, since we had heard so many great things about it, AND we were just leaving a not-so-awesome area. We were all ready for awesome-ness, but were sorely disappointed.

Pros:

-Beautiful beach inside the national park

-.......

-Uh........

-Yep. That's all I got.

Cons:

-Entrance to aforementioned national park was $16 per person (unless you were a resident and then it was like a buck)

-Other beaches in the area were nasty black sand/dirt, and very crowded.

-All the roads in and out of town were super twisty, which sucked with a very carsick sensitive kid.

-So many souvenir shops and parking lots. You'd be driving down the street, and have like 5 guys trying to tell you that you can't get any closer to the park, and you have to park in his lot....but if you go past him, there's another one! And another! And then like 10 ladies trying to sell me the stupid bird whistle things. Like all on top of each other. It got old really fast.

Day 1 we settled into our apartment. It was ok, except for the fact that it had no stovetop or oven. We cooked with a panini press and a rice cooker. Fun times.

Day 2 we visited Manuel Antonio National Park. After paying the entrance fee, we hiked up to a waterfall...which turned out to be not so worth it. I mean, it was pretty and all, but it was way too long of a hike.

We continued our hike, which was equally as long, and we were disappointed to not see as many monkeys or sloths on the way as we'd hoped. Although I did get the crap scared out of me when a deer decided to hop into the trail, literally less than 2 feet in front of me.

The beach was beautiful, with perfect white sand, no debris, beautiful rocks and jungle. Just waaaay too many people. Especially since it's low/rainy season AND it's a paid beach. It was crazy. Justin made us hike all the way to the end of the beach, hence the lack of people in our pics :)

On our way back from the beach, a group of lively Capuchin monkeys decided to join us (and by "join us" I mean steal food from peoples' bags):

Finally, on our walk back to the park entrance, we finally saw some critters (more in the video below):

The next day, we visited Playa Biesanz. It, too, was crappy dirt and packed full of people. Although, we did get a fun visit from a group of squirrel monkeys, and a huge thunderstorm that drove us all home.

Here's the rest of the beach trip that day:

The last day we were here, we visited Playa Espadilla. Didn't take a lot of pictures since we weren't there long before it started raining, but I did get these gems:

Yes, that's my swim suit, matching the orange streaks in her hair perfectly

And Amaia apparently wasn't feeling so great, so she made herserlf a throw up bowl


 
 
 

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