Mike in the Wild

It was one of the easiest parks to reach on my eight-day trip to Costa Rica.  Even though it's bordered by the main highway on the country's Pacific Coast, I nonetheless missed the entrance the morning I visited Carara National Park and then had to turn my rental car around in heavy traffic.  A guide solicited me as I slowly drove through the open gate but I waived him off; I preferred to get my bearings and explore the visitor center first.  However besides restrooms and an attendant to check my reservation, there was very little information displayed about the park.  I had become accustomed to at least snapping a photo of placards with trail maps but the only one posted showed surprisingly little detail.  I was visiting Carara on my last full day in Costa Rica.  It was my very last park and my last chance to see some birds that had mostly eluded me.  Namely scarlet macaws were on my list, but so too were trogons.  I had seen a pair of the macaws...

I had thought that Manuel Antonio National Park only allowed six hundred visitors to enter daily. While eating an early breakfast on my hotel restaurant's patio in Quepos, I could see a line of people waiting to enter through the park's gate shortly after the seven o'clock opening time.  I queued for almost ten minutes when I was admitted closer to nine o'clock, the time I had reserved two weeks before through the preserve's on-line ticketing portal.  Crowds were a new phenomenon during my mid-winter Costa Rica trip.  Why was Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica's smallest national park, also its busiest?   In Arenal Volcano National Park, I had stayed at the only hotel situated immediately in the park.  My impression was the hotel wasn't full and even day visitors were scarce.  When I visited Monteverde Cloud Forest on the next leg of my trip, a lot of people were entering the park at 11:30 a.m. when I joined my guided tour.  But there wasn't any wait to p...