This weekend I decided to head down the Pacific coast to Manuel Antonio National Park. I first went to the town of Puntarenas where I could catch a bus to the park. Puntarenas is on a long skinny peninsula in the Pacific and has a couple of miles of very clean beaches right in town. The beaches are popular with the local Costa Ricans and were fairly busy. I had a couple of hours before my bus left so I explored the town and the beaches and went swimming.

The bus to Manuel Antonio was 4 hours and mostly followed the Pacific coast as it changed from the dry, brown region in the north to the rainy, green region in the south. One river the bus crossed, I could see 4 or 5 big crocodiles lying on the banks. Later the bus went through the surfing town of Jaco which is full of foreigners. After Jaco there were miles and miles of African palm plantations which were endless rows of large palm trees. These plantations were planted after bananas were no longer profitable because of disease and labour costs. I didn't arrive in the town of Manuel Antonio until after the sun set and I found a hotel on the beach. I didn't bring my tent this time because there was no camping allowed in the park, but I should have because people were camped out on the beach and there was a camping area at the hotel. I went to beach and I was the only one there. The beach had some pretty strong waves but it was very shallow so I had fun playing in the waves.

The next morning I got up to get to the park when it opened at 7:00. The park is only open from 7-4 and there are strict rules about how many people can enter each day. It is also closed on Mondays. I was one of the first people in the park and the rest of them headed straight for the park's beaches so I had the trails to myself. The park was full of wildlife. I was only in the park for about 6 or so hours and I saw pacas, which look like huge hamsters, raccoons and a coatimundi. I saw quite a few large, rather tame iguanas and many other types of lizards. The were also groups of the white-faced monkeys hanging around and I could hear the howlers monkeys. The park also had the endangered Central American squirrel monkey, but I didn't see any of those. The forest floor was full of large red and black crab with purple pincers. They would scurry around trying to return to their home before I got near, and if they couldn't find a place to hide they would raise their claws threateningly. But the most interesting sighting of the day was spotting two sloths up in the canopy. One was sleeping and the other was moving in slow motion along a branch.

One trail had a warning sign on it saying the trail was closed, but since I had walked the rest of the trails I decided to check it out. It went to a beach where the trail was mostly washed out, but I managed to find a way down to the beach. The beach was very large, but rocky and it was completely secluded and probably hadn't had visitors in a while. The sand was covered with bright red crabs who would part like the red sea as I walked along the beach. I spent the rest of my time in the park exploring the rocks and the dark crabs that lived on them and swimming in the waves.

On the return bus ride I was unable to return through Puntarenas because there were no late buses so I was forced to take a roundabout route 8 hour trip through San Jose. The road to San Jose was very scenic as it climbed into the mountains. The only time it rained the entire trip was when I was sitting in a bus, and when we arrived in San Jose it was raining hard. The gutters where full of water and some of the roads were slightly flooded so it seems that the rainy season is in full swing in San Jose. Here in Bagaces, the rain has faded again and it has been dry again for the last few days however the vegetation has become more green from the few days of rain. I caught the last bus back to Bagaces and didn't get back to my house until midnight.