Costa Rica- Manuel Antonio & Quepos
Our final stop of our Costa Rica honeymoon took us south, to the western coast of the country about mid-way to Panama.
We chose Manuel Antonio because of the wildlife — and boy, it did not disappoint! We saw everything I wanted to check off the list, and took photos of almost all of them. I’ll post a few photos in this blog post, but head to my “Costa Rica Wildlife” post for more!
We stayed at the Gaia, which was an absolutely stunning hotel perched on a ridge that overlooked the pacific ocean (hello, gorgeous sunsets) about a mile from the actual National Park. The Gaia actually has it’s own preserve on-site as well, as part of a project to repopulate the Macaw population in the region.
Venturing off hotel grounds, we did both a whitewater rafting and mangrove kayaking tour. The whitewater was fun, but the water level was very low because the season has been so dry. We enjoyed paddling through the jungly mangroves as well, though we only saw interesting birds and no snakes, much to Charlie’s disappointment.
Manuel Antonio National Park is the busiest park in Costa Rica, and it’s also one of the newest. They also recently almost tripled in size thanks to newly acquired land.
We hired a guide to take us around the park, which I highly recommend. He found rare birds and spotted animals, including a number of sloths, that we’d have never noticed on our own. Of course, you can see some wildlife without the guides, but we enjoyed learning all about what we were seeing, too. There are loads of guides outside the gates of the park, but to ensure you get a licensed guide, ask your hotel for recommendations.
We were also surprised that our hotel (beyond the reserve) had wildlife of it’s own — a two-toed sloth mama and baby, who have taken up residence in the tree overlooking the swimming pool.
Like everywhere else we went in Costa Rica, the food in Manuel Antonio and neighboring Quepos was excellent. We tried to eat at a different type of restaurant each night, going into Quepos twice, and into Manuel Antonio twice (and once to our hotel!).
We had amazing sushi with a sunset view from Barba Roja, delicious steak at Gabriella’s at the marina, way too much rice with shrimp at Marisqueria Velamar and excellent tuna at Rico Tico Jungle Grill. But the highlight was certainly El Avion, the airplane-turned-bar atop one of the hills of Manuel Antonio. Touristy for sure, but the airplane was actually a part of the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980’s. The plane, which was abandoned in Nicaragua, eventually made its way to San Jose, Costa Rica where it was disassembled, taken by train and then truck to this hill top and then put back together while a restaurant was built around it. We really enjoyed our drinks there — we didn’t go for dinner, but it was very busy— and Charlie had a good time reading all about the history behind the plane and even climbing up in to the cockpit!
It was really hard to leave Costa Rica at the end of our two-week stay, but we already have made plans to go back at either the end or the beginning of rainy season so that we can experience the change in environment.
Until next time…. Pura Vida
