As we drove out of the mountains, I steeled myself for 10 days at the beach. Mike and the kids love the beach, so we split the trip 50/50 between mountains and beach. We were headed to a hotel right outside of Manuel Antonio National Park, a highly recommended destination due to the pristine beaches and wildlife so thick you can't throw a coconut without hitting something. Mike knows, because he threw a coconut at the base of a tree to try and break it open, and he accidentally hit a camouflaged iguana (it, miraculously, seemed unharmed).
On the drive to Quepos, the nearest city to Manuel Antonio, from Monteverde we stopped to see the crocodiles under the Tarcoles River bridge. There were so many, and some of them were huge.
The first afternoon we arrived it was raining, but that didn't keep us from hitting up the beach anyways. The girls and Mike stayed out there in the rain jumping over waves for a couple of hours, then we went to dinner at a local falafel place.
Our first National Park pic of the summer! Our hotel was perfectly situated 50 meters from the beach and 200 meters from the entrance to Manuel Antonio National Park. We reserved an early entrance slot at 7:00 a.m. since the girls have been waking up around 5:30 a.m. here (the birds are chirping and screeching at 4:30 a.m.) and I also read that it's better to go early to see wildlife and avoid the crowds.
Within 5 minutes of being in the park we spotted our first wild sloth thanks to an older couple who had gone with a tour the day before and told us where they saw one.
Our next wildlife sighting ranks among my favorite of the whole trip, a blue morpho butterfly. We were walking down the trail and a blinking apparition appeared in front of us. The underside of a blue morpho is brown, so when their wings are lifted in flight it blends in with the understory. But the top of the wings is a brilliant metallic blue, so you see flashes of blue when their wings are down. They are also enormous, so it was magical to have them fly right by and almost land on us.
We made it to our first beach destination, Playa Manuel Antonio, and nearly had the beach to ourselves for the first few hours. The tide was in and the waves and riptides were too intense for swimming, so we played in the sand and walked down the beach for a few hours until the tide was lower and waves were calmer.
This is where the iguana assault occurred, and proof to PETA that it was still alive.
A portrait of before and after. They played in the sand for hours, digging and piling, throwing and burying. I mostly read my book, happy to have some time to relax. About an hour later when we were ready to go to the next beach, we couldn't find one of Parker's purple crocs. A hazy memory came back to me of hearing her tell Sybil at some point in their play, "I'm burying my shoe!" We combed the beach trying to find it, to no avail. Our only hope is that it is unearthed by the tide and some thoughtful beachgoer throws it away, because the thought of contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gives me nightmares.
Sybil on Playa Manuel Antonio. The tide went out and waves got calm enough for us to swim for a couple of hours.
After a few hours at the first beach we went to the snack bar to eat lunch, and that's when the wildlife sightings picked up again. Squirrel monkeys dropped fruit seeds on our heads, we first heard and then saw howler monkeys, and we also saw a ton of capuchin monkeys (above, with a baby holding on to it's mother).
We took a short hike around Sendura Catedral, a peninsula that juts out into the ocean and connects Playa Manuel Antonio with Playa Espadilla Sur, the other major beach in Manuel Antonio National Park. During certain times of the year, it's a great place to see humpback whales migrate, but now is not the season. We swam and played some more.
You can see the beach in front of our hotel in the distance, and we didn't want to walk the couple of miles all the way back out of the park and then to our hotel since we would have to carry the single shoed Parker most of the way. The tide was low enough that we could scramble over the rocks at the end of this beach and be within 100 meters of our hotel.
Sybil and Parker, beach ready on our second morning. After dropping off our laundry in Quepos and buying some replacement beach shoes for Parker at a local market, we hit up the beach for the whole day. Mike rented boogie boards, and we had a great time swimming, boogie boarding, creating houses, and collecting cool rocks, shells, and coral bits that had washed up.
Parker's collection of coral.
Sybil's colorful collection of shells and rocks.
Mike went for a run, and I got in some yoga to pretend like I'm doing something active.
It was Dia de Los Padres (Costa Rican Father's Day), and I really enjoyed watching Mike play with the girls on the beach. He's attentive, loving, playful, protective, silly, and just all around the best dad to these awesome humans.
The next day we were set to meet up with Rick Airey and his family. Rick was the first coach of Doublewide, and is an Austin Ultimate legend. Rick and his family live in Costa Rica, so we planned on staying with them in their house near Perez Zeledon for a few days. They decided to move back to central Texas a few weeks after we booked the tickets however, so instead we met up with his family at an incredible hotel called La Mariposa. This was our view from our balcony.
And this was our view at breakfast...un arcoíris! There were beautiful scarlet macaws flying around the hotel, and I could hear a troop of howler monkeys as I wrote this post.
We made the most of our time together hanging out with Rick's awesome family. His partner Melanie is a joy to talk to, and our kids absolutely loved having their two awesome kids (Gabe - 10 and Maya - 8) around to play and swim with. We played on the beach, then swam in the pool, then played at the beach again, then swam in the pool some more. We only stopped to eat or sleep, but barely.
The second day on the beach, their daughter Maya cracked open a coconut while they were playing deserted island. Have you ever tried to break open a coconut before? It's not easy, but it was no problem for Maya. We were all rewarded with a yummy coconut snack.
We're excited that Rick and family will be moving back to Texas, so we're hopeful that we'll see them again soon!
