Manuel Antonio National Park
Merry Christmas!
Early this morning we have arrived to Manuel Antonio National Park. Right at the break of dawn National Geographic Sea Lion approached the rocky promontories that guard the entrance to the park from the ocean side. These rocky islands are nesting sites for colonies of brown boobies, as well as roosting places for white ibises and neo-tropical cormorants, most of which started commuting out, for their daily jobs of searching for food as we approached the coast.
Manuel Antonio is one of Costa Rica’s smallest national parks, a small jewel isolated by the Pacific Ocean, prime real estate development, and farmland. There is though in the working, the process of reconnecting the park with adjacent protected areas.
Manuel Antonio has incredibly beautiful scenery with its contrasting rocky and white sandy beaches. It is on the travel magazines list of 100 places to see before you die. It is a great place to see wildlife as well; we were rewarded today with 100% of the Sloths species found in Costa Rica….2 species! Sloths are only found in the Americas, related with armadillos and anteaters, they belong to a group of mammals considered to be somewhat primitive and not completely well understood.
Also troops of agile and smart white-faced monkeys were well observed, many black iguanas with their very spiny tails, and several species of birds like: yellow-headed caracaras building a nest, great kiskadee, black hooded ant-shrikes, double toothed kites. Some of us had some great views of nature in action, observing a roadside hawk capturing an unfortunate and forever unidentified snake, which it readily killed and ate at a very short distance from us.
It was a special Christmas Day at Manuel Antonio with no snow but lots of wildlife to observe.
Tomorrow we are off to Corcovado National Park.
