35 tourists photographing one small iguana....

Trip Start Dec 17, 2006
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Trip End Jan 17, 2007


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Flag of Costa Rica  ,
Friday, December 22, 2006

So we left Alajuela after two uneventful days of helping Anikah get "back on track" with her sleeping schedule (meaning forcing her to nap against her shrieking-strong will), and headed for Quepos, which is a town on the Pacific coast that is the gateway to Manuel Antonio National Park. I should mention that there are a lot of national parks and conservation areas in Costa Rica; this is, of course, a good thing, because this is an insanely, intensely beautiful country with an incredible number of indigenous animals and plants that deserve to be protected. That said, the beaches making up Manuel Antonio and the "town" immediately before it are less "wilds of nature" and more "Key Westīs much younger brother".
The $7 entrance fee to the park gets you past the free beach and the beachside stalls selling batik pareos, fresh coconut milk, and, in one case, "hare brading". You walk a path through a fairly dense jungle with peeks of gorgeous beaches and crystal blue water to the right, and you can believe that this is truly paradise....right up until you run into the fat, sunburned tourist bellowing,"There, Margie, there! Itīs a goddamned sloth! Can you see the hairy little bastard? Hurry, get me the camera! Hurry, hurry, before he goes into his hole or something!" Still, the area is a postcard picture at every view, and Ani even got to see a group of white-faced Capuchin monkeys and some extremely rotund iguanas. We spent three days at the Hotel Vista Serena, and the view from our balcony to the sea was truly serene, at least during those times when I wasnīt frantically trying to keep Ani from hurtling off the balcony into a herd of mountain cows grazing on the steep hill below.
In search of a slightly less popular ocean access, we headed on to Dominical....
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Comments

emil
emil on Jan 3, 2007 at 03:13PM

American tourists?
Do you know why we are hated / laughed at in the world??Like the ones who try to take pictures of highly poisonous snakes from 5 inches away ..Yeah!
Sounds like a jungle Utopia!! I can hardly wait. I bet Ani is enjoying all the attention too!
Your travel blog is Sooo funny! Please write a book sometime! love ya!!

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