After breakfast, we hopped on the bus to the beach. Our plans were to bypass the public beach, and instead enter Manuel Antonio National Park and spend the day at one of the beautiful beaches along its shore.
Manuel Antonio is the smallest national park in Costa Rica, but it’s also the most crowded with tourists. Much of the wildlife there seems accustomed to people. So while the monkeys we’d seen elsewhere were mainly in binocular range, these monkeys came right up close to the people.
There were warning signs everywhere asking people to please not feed the monkeys, which unfortunately went unheeded by many of the tourists.
In addition to monkeys, we saw iguanas right on the beach, large spiders (one gave Cathy a fright when it crawled out of a toilet she was using), all sorts of lizards and birds and interesting things like that.
We spent the day on the second beach along the well-marked trail through the National Park. Relatively quiet, the beach was absolutely beautiful, and we all had a great time relaxing and enjoying the waves. I lay in the water and floated, thinking to myself that I should savour the moment because I didn’t know when the next time was that I’d feel so relaxed and carefree. As it turned out, I was right.
The sun was very hot that day, and we all got sunburned despite our best efforts. My cold had progressed to the blow-nose-constantly phase, and as such I kept wiping the sunscreen off my nose. By the end of the day I looked a bit like Rudolph. Oh well, what can you do?
Mid-afternoon, we hiked back to the main public beach area, stopping at a restaurant for some drinks and snacks. Cathy also made her most significant souvenir purchase: Dora, a toy ignana, bought from a vendor along the beach. She’d wanted to name him Ignatius, but the vendor informed her that her name was Dora. A nine-year-old back at the hotel explained that only the female iguanas have spikes on their backs. Whether that’s true or not, I have no idea, but it seemed to make sense.
That evening was our “last night together” as a group, since Julie had another tour beginning the next day and we were all heading back to San José at different times.
We decided to make the most of it, by going back to the Bamboo Jam restaurant where we’d had dessert the other night. The food was nothing spectacular, but every Friday night there was a jam session with local musicians. The music was lively and some of the musicians and patrons were dancing very enthusiastically. Everyone took about a zillion group pictures that night.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and I, still fighting my cold, fell asleep almost right away. Some of the others headed to the beach for a massive beach party. It had started to rain a little, and they apparently got an awesome display of thunder and lightning on the beach.
We still had one day left, but for all intents and purposes, the trip was over. I didn’t want to leave Quepos. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to stay and see more of the country and continue the adventure. But all good things must eventually come to an end.
Next: Return to San José, and a lousy end to a great trip