The red and orange colors of an amazing sunrise was the best way to start our morning, we were arriving to one of the most popular national parks from Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio National Park. The place it’s well known because the nice beaches that has; but also because the amount of animal species than can be observed in an easy way along the trails, our expedition landing crafts take us to Espadilla Sur beach to begin our adventure.
Once we arrived the group was split in two, some people decided to walk a bit more and take the trail of Punta Catedral. Thousands of years ago Punta Catedral was an island that at the actual time is connected to mainland by a unique formation; a tombolo is created by the amount of sediments accumulated in between that place. Our group headed into Sloth Valley trail and what a way to call that easy walking area. As soon we started our walk we spotted two spiny tailed iguanas, posing for us like statues pretending to be part of the branches where they were. We advanced learning about the trees and interesting flowers along the path, the trails were peaceful and not to crowded but suddenly we heard a loud roar… they were howler monkeys. These primates were feeding on some leaves; those large monkeys are completely vegetarian even when they sound like a big predator they used their powerful vocalizations just to mark their territorial zone. Another species of monkey that we saw was the White faced capuchin Monkey, much more active and curious than the howlers.
The sloths were the other unique species that we saw, we found the first brown throated three toed sloth almost at the top of a tree enjoying the sun and a Hoffmann’s two toed sloth in the middle of dark brown lianas, from a distance it was looking like a big ball of fur. We really enjoyed our morning.
Our afternoon was complete with some walking trip and a nice boat ride that took us inside a small river, it was a quite good birding outing, also found another two toed sloth sleeping about 4 feet over the water like enjoying the cool place after a really hot day. Today was a great day!
