Squeezing into Manuel Antonio National Park

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 pass through the ticket gate. And on my vacation's last stop, at Carara National Park, I'm not sure I even needed to bother purchasing my online ticket; I could count the other visitors I encountered on my two hands.

A big difference between the four parks was that Manuel Antonio was not only the smallest protected area, it also only had a single entrance for tourists. I also discovered that the preserve was closed one day a week to give it a break from the heavy human impact. (Fortunately for me that day was a Tuesday and I had planned my visit over a year ago for a Monday.)

Manuel Antonio was also in a unique geographic location, its coastal jungles primarily situated on a peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean. Vast palm plantations and small communities, like Quepos where I stayed, bordered the park. Development would have squeezed out this last remnant of native environment in the area had the park not been created in 1971. It was a critical decision because the environment was the only habitat for an endangered sub-species of squirrel monkey.

Monkeys were indeed the big news of the morning as I encountered a small troop of capuchins at my hotel shortly after breakfast. They were uninhibited and unafraid as they explored the balconies, breezeways and roofs of the hotel. At check-in the day before, the staff had advised me about locking my room's sliding balcony door, warning me that the monkeys were skilled at opening them.

My hotel's property bordered the national park, so I was interested in the other wildlife that had easy access to the grounds. Close to sunset the previous night on the hotel's rooftop bar, at least four fiery-billed aracaris gathered in a nearby tree while yellow-throated toucans called out in long yelps. I delighted in taking my morning coffee on my balcony as I witnessed up close some of Costa Rica's amazing birdlife including lineated woodpeckers, blue-throated goldentail hummingbirds, and Finsch's parakeets.

As I entered the preserve, I could see that the staff at Manuel Antonio National Park took protecting the wildlife under their stewardship quite seriously. An inspection of my day pack revealed some nuts and pretzels, my planned lunch for the day. Taking food into the preserve was forbidden so I had to store my snacks in a rental locker available for five U.S. dollars. Deeper into the park, at the junction of the main trails, food was available for purchase and consumption only within barred and screened enclosures which looked a lot like cages in a nineteenth century zoo.

It was a warm and humid early February morning. The main path from the entrance was Sendero Perezoso, or Sloth Trail. Actually there were two close, parallel ways to cut through the park on this main artery: a gravel road or a narrower path with stops and interpretive signs. The majority of visitors followed the road while I followed the path because it seemed less crowded and more intimate. The trail was partially an elevated walkway in some swampy areas where crabs with burnt-orange-colored legs were easy to spot. I spent too many minutes capturing terrible photos of a bird in a dense thicket that would take me many more minutes many days later to identify as a black-bellied wren. Unfortunately the path was over-packed with slow tour groups so I soon availed myself of the first escape path to the wider roadway.

I was glad I acted because I soon ran into those protected squirrel monkeys, known locally as mono titis, or what English speakers called grey-crowned Central American squirrel monkeys. As they crossed the road in the overhead tree branches, they were as curious and unabashedly playful as the capuchins back at the hotel. This subspecies of monkey differed from other members of its species in some subtleties in coloring. I noted their rufous backsides, pinkish ears and eye patches, black muzzles, and grayish caps with widow's peaks, but I couldn't say how they compared with their more numerous cousins.

The mono titis did contrast sharply with some nearby howler monkeys that were much more sedate and mostly black. However compared to my first sloth of the morning, cloistered in a nearby tree, the howlers were hyperactive. The three-toed sloth was mostly hidden by branches, motionless and barely a shadow in the forest: a real bump on a log.

Maybe it was the mass of people, or the sticky humidity, but unlike at other parks, I sensed in Manuel Antonio that I annoyed some guides. These men - seldom women - were leading groups of visitors through the park, pointing out subjects of interest and focusing scopes on animals. Almost without fail, when I would ask someone in the group what they were viewing, a tourist always answered. The guide would often not. Of course I wasn't paying him for his knowledge so he wasn't obliged to be helpful.

I could have hired my own guide outside the entrance to the park. There were many opportunities available; individuals stood by in their khakis and safari hats, scopes at attention. But I had opted to keep to my own pace, and to, yes, sometimes pirate information off of others. It would have been much more difficult to accomplish in Arenal or Monteverde, amidst the much thinner crowds, where it would have been an obvious invasion of privacy. I missed what we often see in United States national parks, actual park rangers roaming the busiest trails dispensing helpful, salient information.

Perezoso Road/Trail let to a junction of trails near the restaurant and restroom, a compact area where it seemed like everybody visiting the park that day was thronging. I had discovered somewhere along the way that the park actually admitted twelve hundred visitors daily, not six hundred. I wouldn't have been surprised if there were actually three thousand. However there was another reason for the tight congregation: high above the toilet facilities in the treetop canopy snuggled a sloth.

It was difficult to locate it at first, and then discern it in the shade where it lounged. (Actually it could have been busy eating; you can't tell with a sloth.) The creature had moss growing in its fur, which helped camouflage the sloth in the green canopy. A capuchin monkey distracted us gawkers for a brief moment, giving me a chance to change my angle of view of the overhead sloth. From a new vantage point, I could see at least two limbs tightly wrapped around a branch. It was an exciting find but, I must say, not the most riveting. Also there might be some health hazards in sloth viewing: fifteen minutes of craning one's neck can be painful. However I did find a close approximation to a park ranger when a private guide admonished me for veering off the trail slightly. He warned me that there were dangerous snakes in the brush. (I would see bats, tarantulas, and tree frogs in Costa Rica, but not one single asp.)

I followed the trail to Playa Manuel Antonio, the park's namesake beach and possibly the most popular attraction in that whole area of Costa Rica. Palm tree-fringed on a wide, sheltered cove, it was a postcard perfect setting. The sea lapped the shore gently, inviting visitors into the warmest water I've ever entered in the Pacific Ocean. I thought beaches didn't get any more beautiful until I donned my mask and snorkel, and discovered terrible underwater visibility. The joke was on me because I had lugged the gear, along with an underwater camera, for the entire length of my visit for that one and only stop. Meanwhile above the sea, capuchin monkeys and iguanas marauded across the beach while hermit crabs scurried between rocks and frigatebirds soared overhead.

The beach lay on one side of a peninsula where on the other side lay Playa Espadilla Sur. Its sand was grey, and the crowds were much thinner than on Manuel Antonio. The beach was also much longer, extending far to the north where a fence separated it from Playa Espadilla Norte and the development in Quepos. I had visited that end of the beach before breakfast on a short walk from my hotel. Like on many city beaches, garbage was strewn about and cantinas advertised late day Happy Hours. Outside their tents, waking beach campers brushed their teeth as dozens of black vultures eyed yesterday's detritus. What a difference a fence made. And no wonder Playa Manuel Antonio was so popular.

I left Playa Espadilla Sur and followed Sendero Punta Catedral to the end of the peninsula, Punta Catedral, that jotted into the sea. The trail was a loop, its first half quite steep. And the weather was unpleasant as the humid jungle heated up in the intense afternoon sunlight. Several miradors, or overlooks, allowed views of the waves crashing against the rocky shore. At the first stop lay Isla Olocuita offshore close to some smaller islets. A descriptive placard informed me that five bird species have been found on those islands: magnificent frigatebirds, white ibises, brown pelicans, bridled terns, and brown-footed boobies. During my two-night stay in the area I encountered the first three.

After almost three hours of swimming and hiking, I found myself back at the trail junction where I had snapped shots of the three-toed sloth high above the restrooms. And as is pretty typical in a sloth's average day, it was still in the same location. However it was moving, ever so slowly, adjusting its position out of the sunlight. The sloth showed its head, then its face, all four of its arms and legs at one time or another, and later even its tail, of which its existence was new information for me. I could make out the sloth's white mask and black eye patches in my zoomed photos, and even watched it scratch its backside with its three clawed toes. It was a veritable circus act compared to the sloth's performance earlier in the day.

Two o'clock was fast approaching and I was hot and hungry so I decided to forgo hiking any new trails; they were mostly one way, traversing jungles on the way to additional points along the coast. Instead I followed Perezoso Road back toward the entrance. The crowds had thinned considerably and only a few new tour groups were hiking into the park. Their guides were recognizable from the morning groups they had led on their first shift. I'm afraid I glommed on to some of these parties again, listening and watching as they pointed their scopes, gazes, and cameras into the trees. Thanks to them I encountered additional howler monkeys and a brand-new bird, a potoo, a night-hunting bird that blended in with the standing tree trunk it slept upon. I spotted a bird of prey which a guide generously saved me some work identifying by informing me - or technically his tour group - it was a broad-tailed hawk. If I wasn't wasting my time shooting a ruddy ground dove, I might have seen a deer that crossed the road.

However I was paying close attention when shaking bushes and tree branches attracted me to another troop of squirrel monkeys. For a few minutes, four or five individuals scampered up and down trees and crowded together several feet from the trail. The lower sun in the sky illuminated the scene like a spotlight, and anyone watching had front row seats for the production. (I guess I had nosebleed seats for the sloth's show.)

After exiting the park and retrieving my day bag from the locker, I immediately sat down on a bench and ate some almonds. A capuchin monkey spied me from outside the gate, where shops sold souvenirs and guides still solicited late-day tours. Music played from open air bars and restaurants. The primate didn't hesitate to sidle in my direction through overhead rafters. It didn't look playful like the capuchins at the hotel that morning. I hate to say that it wasn't cute either: maybe it was its self-assuredness, or more likely it was the scar on its lip.

I quickly hid my snacks which diverted the monkey to a new plan. In a flash, it swooped down upon a garbage can lying between myself and the gate, slipped an arm under the lid, and grabbed a candy bar wrapper before climbing back up into the rafters. Park personnel looked on befuddled as they replaced the lid.

Think about organ grinders from old movies and you'll picture a capuchin, with a buff-colored face and with hair on its head that looks like a black cap. Invariably it was that kind of monkey that collected money in a tin cup as the grinder cranked out tunes. This activity always occurred on a crowded, city street. A hundred people could easily walk by, but the operation only needed one coin from that group to make the odds work during the course of the day. Manuel Antonio wasn't a city street, but the crowds, the guides, and the desperate monkeys made it unlike any other park I would visit in Costa Rica.