Day 148 to 150 - Tico Tico

Quepos

Day 148

We hopped on the bus this morning to go to Playa Espadilla, the beach just outside the entrance to Manuel Antonio National Park. The town was small but quite busy with restaurants across from the beach. The beach was quite rocky and strewn with junk and rubbish, not that appealing to us but there were plenty of people (including lots of Americans) settled on the beach and swimming in the water.

After checking out the area we hopped back onto the bus and went all the way back in to Quepos and walked down to check out the new marina. The marina was very modern but seemed to be a bit of a white elephant, it was quiet, with expensive restaurants and almost no one eating at them.

Another bus ride, this time to Cafe Milagro for coffee and cake, then to a bar across the road with great views of the ocean while we waited for the bus. The landscape is not only tropical but with plenty of jungle and very attractive.

We were expecting it to rain in the afternoon as it had yesterday. The rain finally came around 7pm, and from there it continued heavily through the night.

Day 149

The rain continued through the morning and into the afternoon - possibly the most rain either of us had ever seen. The national park was closed on Mondays, so we had planned to visit a few rental car agencies as we intended to drive from Quepos. We tried to wait out the rain but eventually picked up our umbrellas that we'd bought in David and headed into the rain and onto the bus. We visited a couple of agencies in Quepos, but neither of them could match the price we'd already found online.

Day 150

Today we awoke to sunshine, it looked like the storm from yesterday had rained itself out. Another bus ride, this time to visit Manuel Antonio National Park - along with everyone else in town it seemed. The queue for buying tickets was fairly long in the hot sun but we eventually we made it into the park.

Lots of people had paid for guides to spot animals for them but it was pretty easy to see animals without a guide since the guides all spoke loudly to their groups and everybody stopped to stare. We saw a sloth in the distance as well as a pair of coati doing the sort of things that animals do. The park can only by accessed by walking so we visited a couple of beaches. M walked to one of the high viewing points, seeing monkeys along the way, before we headed back out, seeing the same sloth that we had seen earlier but in a closer, slightly different place, that's a big move for a sloth in only a few hours. Just outside the park we saw more squirrel monkeys running along the phone lines - more than we'd seen inside the park.

On the way back we stopped off at the El Avion restaurant, which is built around the body of an old plane. Once again the views were lovely overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Costa Rica is very beautiful even if everything in the tourist areas is expensive compared to the rest of central and southern America.

Back at our airbnb we went for a swim in the pool, while a group of squirrel monkeys played overhead, running along ropes and jumping from tree to tree.

We headed out later on for a drink and dinner, just making it in time for happy hour as the sun set.