The first day of our journey took us to one of the most beautiful and most-visited national parks of the Costa Rican system, Manuel Antonio National Park. Its comprised of three long strands of magnificent white sand, the Pacific Ocean and about three square miles of forest. The park is unique for being one of the few places in the country where the forest comes down to the water’s edge in places, allowing bathers to swim in the shade and even look at monkeys or sloths while floating in its warm tropical waters.
The best time of the day to visit the park is very early in the morning, like we did today, as the temperature is still cool, the animals are beginning to get active and the numbers of visitors are still low. In order to try to protect the ecosystem of the park and the animals’ peace of mind, the rangers must limit the number of people to 800 simultaneously inside the park. They do a great job!!!
Most of us who went ashore decided to take the long Cathedral Point trail, which led us through nicely kept transitional forest. This is the type of forest that is on the borderline of the seasonally dry forest of the north Pacific of the country and the wet lowland forest of the south Pacific region.
As we walked through the trail looking for lizards and crabs, looking at plants and their adaptations, we heard an unfamiliar sound. It sounded more like a bark than anything else. We were walking straight towards a troop of mantled howler monkeys munching away on fig leaves. (Yes, the same type of fig as your regular potted Ficus species). As they jumped and pirouetted on the fig’s branches we could see their incredible tree-dwelling adaptation, their prehensile. Not all New World monkeys have prehensile tails, but ONLY New World monkeys have prehensile tails, this amazing adaptation of some primates to use their tails as a fifth limb. It can be used to handle food, branches, hang their whole body weight from a branch and for locomotion when necessary.
We all headed down the high hill, content with our good fortune; so on to the warm Pacific waters or on to our second option of the morning, the flatter trail known as Sloth Valley. Back to the white sand beach for a dip with great stories of white-throated capuchin monkeys, more howlers, two- and three-toed sloths, agoutis, crab-eating raccoons and much more.
Quite a great day, but tiring nonetheless. Many of us decided a nap was the way to go. Later in the evening our first recap session in the lounge and a well-deserved dinner on board National Geographic Sea Lion, our home away from home for the week. We are looking forward to tomorrow’s new adventure.
