Manuel Antonio and Parque Nacional Corcovado

I loved all of it so be prepared for a very photo heavy post!

Manuel Antonio

We had two days just chilling at the beach at Manual Antonio and enjoying the coastal view from our hostel. I’d spent a stupid amount on new togs in San Jose (I was sick of looking for them so I finally just bought a pair) and I was keen to try them out. They did the job. The time here was short but enjoyed. The avocados were good.

I bought a sarong!

Corcovado

Corcovado National Park was named by National Geographic as one of the most biologically diverse places on earth. Every time we mentioned to a Costa Rican that we would be finishing our trip with Corcovado their eyes would light up and they would be really excited for us.

It was a bit of a trip to get there and so far has been our most expensive activity but it was amazing. We had 1.5 days of hiking through the park looking for animals and enjoying the beautiful beaches and flora. By the end of it I think I was in one of my top 5 stinkiest moments – it was hot and humid in there.

A big thanks goes to our guide Luis who showed us around, kept us safe and used his detective skills to find us when we didn’t show up to the meeting point at 5:30am due to a failed alarm. Always set two alarms!

Instead of going through the photos chronologically I’m just going to put them in somewhat sensical groups. 

The Animals

The Birds

Before we'd even made it to the park our driver took us to see this Common Potoo (in cryptic pose). Can you see the baby? I couldn't see it until I looked closely at the photos afterwards. I thought it was pregnant! This was a pretty awesome start to the trip. 

                                          

Scarlet Macaw along the beach

Common Black Hawk

Female Black-throated Trogon - In the same family as a Quetzal, this is as close as we've come to seeing one so far.

The Monkeys

The park was full of monkeys and the best thing about monkeys is they travel in groups so you'll always see a bunch of them.  The first family we came across were these White-throated Capuchin Monkeys. They came so close to us, like they were curious. Then in a split second they started freaking out and getting angry so we quickly moved along. My current theory is that they saw us smiling and they thought us bearing our teeth was threatening.

From this....

.... to this!

A family of spider monkeys with a curious baby

Squirrel Monkey. Corcovado was the first time we got to see Squirrel Monkeys and they were adorable!

Costa Rica had four different types of monkeys. The only one not pictured here is the Howler Monkey, but don't worry, we saw and heard plenty of them here. 

The Bats

These are the only pair of bats we saw in Corcovado. I think they're Common Tent-making bats, but I'm not totally sure. They flew away just after this photo, I think I maybe got too close. Sorry to the older couple who were also looking at them, I hope you'd taken some good photos!

Other Mammals

We's seen a few coati before now but we'd never seen them is such huge groups before. At one point we were walking along the track and a group of about 20 or so ran across it right in front of us. We also discovered they like to hang out in trees, saw a whole family spread out in the branches of a few trees. 

When we first started seeing coatis around we could never remember their real name so we just called them nose bears. In Guatemala a German guy told us that he didn't know what they were called in English but the literal translation from German was Nose Bear. 

While we were waiting for the boat another group told us they'd seen an anteater just 100 m down the track. We quickly dashed off trying to find it. On the way we met another guide who told us they'd just seen it but it had been moving around so we probably wouldn't find it. I don't know how but I actually spotted it! We got a few minutes of good anteater action. In Puerto Viejo de Talamanca at the Jaguar Rescue Center we had been told we'd be pretty lucky to see one in the wild since they're always up trees. We felt privileged to be able to watch it stick it's head into a termites nest. 

The Crabs

For some reason in one spot we found a lot of these dead Mangrove Crabs. A few were covered in other crabs - crab cannibalism. 

I have never seen so many hermit crabs in my life! There were hoards of them. Sometimes it seemed like the ground was moving, with a slight rattle. I was also witness to many a crab orgy throughout the park, usually involving coconut. Turns out crabs are crazy about coconut. 

The Tapir

Our main goal for Corcovado was to see a tapir. Check! They are one of the craziest animals I've ever seen, it was amazing watching this young male emerge from the forest, have a dip in the river, walk along the beach, have a nap and then a snack, all as if we weren't there. Tapirs are endangered so it made the whole experience feel even more special. 

The Creepy Crawlies

On one of the paths someone had made a mark to warn hikers about the presence of a dangerous snake, the Fer-de-lance, in the area. We walked past that path a few times over the two days, each time stopping to have a look but never being successful until another group were there at the same time and their guy spotted it! Apparently they don't move much. Their awesome camouflage skills make them even more dangerous as people often don't even know they're there. 

I think this might be some kind of spider, although I can only count 5 legs. Either way, I thought it looked pretty cool. 

On the way back from finding the anteater we followed another group of people off track to find a mumma caiman and her babies. The babies were so tiny it would have been so easy to miss therm. 

The Park

The park itself is pretty amazing, a mix of beaches and jungle. Although the beaches look amazing you can't swim there because of dangerous currents and sharks, so you have to be content to just look, even though it's so hot!

Where the jungle meets the sea

Whale Bones Near the Beach

To get to the rangers station we had to walk at least an hour on the beach. While it looks amazing it was the hardest part of the whole trek. Alex had to fashion an impromptu hat. 

A break at the end of the beach stint. 

Rangers Station - after 20km of walking we were pretty happy to make it here. This is where we spent the night, in a dorm we shared with a mouse and many mosquitoes. 

Luis took us to the beach to watch sunset. (Alex was playing with settings on the camera hence our funny colour. The sun may have had something to do with it too though)

The forest was filled with stunning old trees and brightly coloured flowers. 

Some of those trees were as dangerous as the animals. 

Going "Home"

We'd had our bags flown into the rangers station and were told to wait in the boat area for the boat that was going to take us up to Drake's Bay where we had accommodation for the night. Turned out waiting for the boat meant waiting for the tide to come in. At some point someone must have realised this was going to take too long as they assembled a group of all the different boat drivers and pushed the various boats out until they hit the incoming tide. 

During our ride to Drakes Bay we even got to see a few dolphins skipping about. Drakes Bay was small but nice. Upon arrival to our accommodation we inquired about taking a bus out in the morning as we'd been told there were buses we could catch. We were informed that there was one local guy who owned a bus and sometimes he left at 4am, sometimes he didn't and it wasn't safe. So rather than risk an unsafe bus that maybe left at 4am going I don't know where we opted for the boat out option instead. And so started our journey to Panama. 

Contrary to popular backpacker belief we've both really enjoyed Costa Rica. We'd been told that you can do everything you can do in Costa Rica in Nicaragua but for half the price. I find this to be a bit of an insult to both countries. They both have their own things going on and feel very different from each other. I've never been anywhere so full of wildlife as Corcovado (excluding zoos). 

A lot of photos didn’t turn out so well so some of the animals we saw that weren’t pictured here are: a squirrel, an agouti (a big rodent), families of peccaries (wild boars), Toucans, Curassows (like turkeys), a great egret, vultures, humming birds, pigeons, some kind of forest chicken, Jesus Christ lizards, some kind of lizard fighting a grasshopper, a bunch of other lizards and leaf cutter ants. 

Pura Vida

The Caribbean Coast

From Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui we headed for Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the Caribbean Coast. We were told the best way to get there was to take a bus into San Jose and then bus straight out but we wanted to avoid messing around in there if we could which somehow ended up with us and a local family getting a private bus for most of the way.

Unexpectedly we ended up spending 6 nights here. If you're going to bunker down somewhere in Costa Rica here is as good a place as any. There's prime beaches, loads of sloths and a strong Rastafarian culture. It was like what I imagine being in Jamaica would be like. On our first night the owner of the Cabanas we were in showed us how to properly hand wash our clothes (she couldn't stand watching us doing it so badly). She was sure to include the importance of shaking your backside all around for not only exercise but to attract the opposite sex. 

High on our list of things to do was to visit the Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica made famous by a documentary and series on animal planet. In Australia if we wanted to pick ourselves up after a rough day we would watch a video from that sanctuary so it was pretty crazy to actually be able to visit. Getting to see Buttercup, Queen Sloth, was like meeting a celebrity.  

Meeting Buttercup - the very first sloth of the sanctuary 

Buttercup reaching for Alex

So many adorable sloths!

As part of the tour we got a boat ride around a weird canal they had out the back. 

The best part of the boat ride was getting to see this guy doing his exercises

Just visiting the sloth sanctuary wasn't enough. The next day we got up early and walked to the Jaguar Rescue Center to see what they had going on. Turns out they don't have any jaguars but they had a variety of other animals. All the animals had been found by locals and brought to the rescue center, where they stay until they are well enough to be released. Some of them will never be suitable for a full release but they have their own part of some primary forest where they can let their animals run free. I can't remember the reason for all of the animals being there but I think the best story was a caiman that was found in a hotel shower when it was a baby and brought to the center. 

I never realised how adorable anteaters are. They're related to sloths. 

Still has his baby feathers

More Sloths!

Baby Sloth!

This is Toucy - the Toucan. Apparently he's pretty mischievous. He likes to run around the center biting people's ankles. He likes the attention. 

After our awesome tour at the Jaguar Research Center we decided to head towards Manzanillo, a small town on the coast about 12km from Puerto Viejo. There's regular buses between those towns so we figured we'd just catch one when it went past. We ended up accidentally walking all the way to Manzanillo! By the time a bus finally went by it didn't even stop for us. At times I was pretty grumpy about this - when I was tired of walking and when we waited in the bus shelter for an hour to go back to where we had come from, but I guess it was worth it because we found an amazing beach and look out and got to spot some sloths in the wild.

The Caribbean

The Road to Manzanillo

Wild three toed sloth 

After the day of walking we spent some days just chilling out. Mostly on our balcony because it rained all day. 

Our next port of call was San Jose, via white water rafting in the Pacuare River. We got picked up early in the morning and driven 2 hours to the meeting and breakfast spot. After breakfast we head out to the river. In the van we are informed that due to all the rain the Pacuare River is actually too high and dangerous to raft so we are going to be rafting another river for a shorter amount of time. The good news is you get $30 off your price.

Although we were pretty disappointed at the start we had an awesome time. The craziest part of the whole experience was pretty close to the start where we headed right into what looked like a crazy vortex of water. We went so vertical when we hit it that I was thrown into the middle of the boat (from the front). We are both pretty keen to give it another go.

The footage is a bit rough but I pulled some stills from the crazy vortex to give you a bit of an idea. 

This is what we were up against

That's me - sitting where I shouldn't be

After a hearty lunch we are dropped off in San Jose where we spend a few un-noteworthy days. 

Pura Vida

Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui

We weren't totally sure what we were going to do next but on the advice of Natu (Alex's Costa Rican friend) we ended up in the other Puerto Viejo - Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui. There isn't really much to the town here but there was some awesome wildlife spotting to be done in the area. 

We had one full day in Puerto Viejo and we filled it full of animals. First we visited Frogs Heaven, a bit outside the town. It's quite a sweet place in local biologist Jose's backyard. We ended up getting a private tour of the garden which included flora (tropical fruits and medicinal plants) and fauna (so many adorable frogs and heaps of birds). We turned up the same time as a group of mostly American photographers. After our private tour we got to hang out with the photographers and watch all the birds. It was pretty interesting watching them work, they'd set up little photo shoots of the different frogs and most of the time I had no idea what they were on about. They had some of the biggest lenses I'd seen, our guide estimated the value of everyone's kit put together to be about $250 000. Our guide even showed us a macro function on Alex's camera we hadn't realised was there, so we can thank him for the awesome frog photos!

Blue Jeans Dart Frog - I'd really been wanting to see one of these

Green and Black Dart Frog

Gaudy Leaf Frog

Glass Frog

Masked Smilisca

Fake Toucans (Collared Aracari) - They are Toucans, we just started calling them fake toucans because they aren't "The Toucan" 

Humming Bird - sitting still!

Black-cheeked Wookpecker - the first woodpecker I've ever seen!

After lunch we went on a cruise down the Sarapiqui River to try and find some more animals. We went with an awesome local guide, Rodrigo who had helped us get to Frogs Heaven (he even talked to the bus driver for us to make sure we got off at the right stop). We saw heaps of stuff on this trip - sloths, monkeys, iguanas, caiman, vultures, horses, and a few Jesuschrist lizards! At one point we even had local kids shouting "Gringos!" at us from the banks. 

Howler Monkey

Caiman - snapped this photo right before he slid down the bank back into the water

I think we saw like 20 different iguanas. They were everywhere.

Pura Vida