Manuel's Hyperhydrosis is Contagious

We arrived in Manuel Antonio last Thursday, as mentioned before, and spent the first day relaxing and exploring the small town. We especially enjoyed our lunch at Cafe Milagro, which has an interesting story about its origins. The rains started on schedule around 3pm so we spent the early evening in our room and ended up ordering a pizza to the hotel. The poor delivery guy delivered the pie on foot while holding an umbrella and got soaked, but he had a huge smile on his face by the time he got to our room so I didn't feel too bad.

The plan was to take a guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park on Friday morning. All the books and locals said that it was best to get to the park early in order to ensure entrance, as the rangers capped the number of people in the park each day. With this in mind we set our alarms as early as we could conmprehend and managed to make it to our free breakfast at the crack of 8:30. The park was about 3km from our hotel and we decided to walk under the beautiful blue Costa Rican skies, taking the chance to walk off the (delicious, free) french toast. It should be mentioned here that Costa Rica is very humid and hot - something about the equator and lush rainforests playing roles - and the mornings are the hottest as the clouds do not roll in until after lunch. As such the 3km walk gave my body a chance to sweat out about 2 litres of water, and I was drenched by the time we walzted up to the park's entrance.

At the gate we arranged for a guide, Franklin, to show us around. Strangely this was the second tour guide named Frnaklin that we've had in the last two weeks. He was a really nice guy who spoke near perfect English and told us about his extensive education and passion for the local flora and fauna. He carried a huge telescope and endowed me with the privelege, honour, and responsibility of carrying the binoculars! After meeting everyone in the group (a Spanish family and an unmarried, older Dutch couple) we started on the two-hour tour.

During the tour we saw black, green, and tiny lizards, large iguanas, two- and three-toed sloths, lots of birds, owls, white faced monkeys, squirrel monkeys (our favourites), howler monkeys, a nesting hummngbird, three deer, poisoinous spiders, and all the while I played the role of the giant white sweaty pig. It was a great tour. The walk ended on a beach within the park where more white faced monkeys darted amongst the trees and tried to steal the tourists' food. Despite their threat of attack and herpes, they were still cute.

The rest of the day included another Milagro lunch, the rains settling in, two of the happiest hours and a blotted sunset. We ate dinner as the heavens continued their onslaught and then were serenaded to sleep by bellowing howler monkeys in the trees around our hotel. Our time in Manuel Antonio was not even done but already it was one of our favourite places in the world.