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Manuel Antonio is a national park on the Pacific Coast. Recent visitors gave this park their highest recommendations, but, truthfully, this was my least favorite part of our trip. I found the area to be a crowded and expensive tourist town. It was also extremely hot. On the positive side, the park itself was beautiful and teemed with monkeys, iguanas, and brightly colored crabs.
On the first day, we arrived too late to visit the park, so we jumped waves in the ocean. I had anticipated cooling off in the ocean, but the water was unpleasantly warm.
I was at the park by five the next morning. We had been told several times that the entrance was barred by a stream that had to be waded. So I started stripping down to my bathing suit to wade the stream. A passing jogger asked why I didn't just use the path. I looked more carefully. Yup. There was path on dry land.
As we hiked into the park, we were silent so that we wouldn't scare off any wildlife. We surprised two agoutis (they look like large rats without tails) who ran circles around us in their surprise. Later, we crossed two monkeys coming the other way down a path. The first one passed us calmly, then climbed up a tree. When it was at our height, it opened its mouth wide in a threatening gesture.
By the time we left the park, we had seen so much wildlife, we complacently shooed creatures out of our way.
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