Day 5 - December 20 - Quepos - Manuel Antonio National Park

In the morning, we went to Manuel Antonio National Park and did a hike.

The first part of the hike is shown in yellow. The whole group did it. The area of the peninsula was never logged, so the forest is "first growth". At the end of this part of the hike, we were on the good beach, Playa Manuel Antonio. A whole family of monkeys arrived at the beach at the same time that we did. Unfortunately one of the park guides had the monkey's trained. They came up to him looking for handouts. They definitely recognized him. All of us, including Jimmy were upset at this.

The group split up, and I went on the part shown in purple to the look out point. I then returned and joined the rest of the family swimming at the beach. The whole group then hiked out along the green trail. We got really lucky and caught a sloth actually moving.

In the afternoon, David went on a separate tour that was a canopy zip line, pictures of which can be found here. Don and Marina took the "15minute" hike back to the small town of Manual Antonio, at the park entrance. Jimmy said 15 minutes, but it was more like 30 minutes. We did a little shopping, and then took the bus (105 colons) back to the hotel. Michael went with some of the group into Quepos for drinks and dinner. David, Don and Marina walked back to a restaurant called El Gato Negro. This is right across the street from El Avion. Unfortunately it does not have a web site. Jimmy had recommended this restaurant as well. Food is Italian and was excellent.

During this time, Denver got hit with the Blizzard before Christmas. For some strange reason, the hotel put on its cable three Denver channels. So we kept an eye on the storm while we enjoyed the heat. None of the hotels in San Jose had these channels, and the Mawamba lodge only had one TV which we did not use.