Manuel Antonio National Park is one of the top attractions in Costa Rica and we couldn’t leave it out of our trip. It is is the smallest Costa Rican National Park but it also the most popular with more than 150,000 visitors annually. It has some beautiful beaches combined with a lot of easily seen wildlife that we really didn’t want to miss.
We had booked an Airbnb for 8 nights on the hill above the park entrance but we cancelled and changed to a hotel (Hotel Villa Romantica) inside the town of Quepos. We were worried that we would be a little isolated and dependent on local buses if we stayed outside of town. And the heat is starting to get to us so we really wanted a pool. We were not disappointed by our decision. Quepos is actually the biggest town we stayed in during our time in Quepos, although it only has 20,000 residents. It didn’t have the tourist town feel that we got in most of our other Costa Rican stays. We thought we got to see a lot more of the real Costa Rican Atmosphere and walk to the town mercado, grocery stores and a good variety of restaurants.
8 days was a little long to stay in a town that really has one main attraction- the National Park. There was also some catamaran rides that we weren’t interested in, as well as a “monkey” mangrove tour. We had seen enough monkeys for free in Montezuma as well as visiting our Quepos hotel so we decided to not pay for the $60 per person mangrove tour. We ended up taking a lot of walks around town and doing our own discoveries. We saw Scarlet Macaws flying over every day and sometimes the even perched in trees at our hotel. They are just awesome huge colorful birds that are actually seen more in town than at the national park. We also saw more toucans which were becoming a little less exciting to see after being in Costa Rica for over a month at this point. Quepos is not really on a beach- it has a small fishing boat marina and a jetty along the mouth of a river. One day, we took a small ferry across the river to the long deserted beach on the other side. Nobody was using this huge flat beach except a couple of locals out walking dogs. It was really interesting to see the shacks along the beach road that most tourists don’t get to. Such a beautiful place to live but some pretty tough conditions to do it in. Most homes had electricity but were really just pallets and sheet metal lashed together to form makeshift houses.
We did visit the tourist beaches near the park entrance on a couple of days. We paid for umbrellas and beach chairs and spent the day in and out of the water to stay cool. It was only 85 degrees but the humidity made it feel so much hotter. We had lunch here but the restaurants cost a bit more and weren’t as good as the local places back in the town of Quepos.
We chose to pay for a guide on the day we entered the National Park. Not only do they see things we can’t see but they have a lot of knowledge about all of the animals we found. The also carry scopes that we were able to take pictures with our phones. We were able to see more monkeys, sloths a few more birds, and some pretty cool looking lizards. We climbed to the lookouts with some pretty good views over the beaches, mangroves and the jungle but it started to rain really hard for a bit so we missed getting some awesome pics. But I can’t complain about our animal photos.
On our last night in Quepos we ate at a waterfront restaurant and saw a pretty good sunset over the river. We enjoyed our time here but it was a few days too long. It is always better to have a couple of lazy days on a beach or around a pool than to have missed something because we ran out of time. It is now time to return to Seattle to see family for the holidays. We are really excited about being home and seeing people but are not looking forward to the 40 degrees and raining which is typical for Seattle Decembers.
The next post will be a summary of what we what we learned about traveling in Costa Rica and I will include my final bird sighting numbers.
