Manuel Antonio Park & area

With only few days remaining to discover a bit of Costa Rica, I picked the Manuel Antonio park for its relative proximity to Panama / Boquete, as well as its self-named Natural park, its beaches and some surfing.

Manuel Antonio park visit
This park has one of the most impressive landscapes of the world and has several coves with many white sand beaches and lush foliage amidst great mountains and forests that reach the beaches. I went there on Sunday July 14th afternoon, and could not only enjoy again (after the ziplining the previous day) some great rainforest views, but also relax almost alone on the beach, perfect :-)

The Park map

Rainforest caption: can i dive inside?

Colorful mushrooms

Puerto Escondido beach

Well, me on a secluded nice beach :)

Just outside of the park, there are other beaches, this time with black-sand, not sure how we can have white & black sand so close. Relax & surfing atmosphere, quite busy during the week-end, as it sounds many Costa Ricans also come there in vacations or long week-ends from San Jose.

From this beach, it is possible to see the park's forest diving into the sea, with few island away cutting the horizon line.

Ziplining on Costa Rica canopy

I had heard this area in Costa Rica had the longest zipline of Americas, and that doing a canopy tree in the incredible rainforest of this Central America area was amazing, so I booked 1/2 day with Santuario tours, and I clearly wasn't disappointed.

On the top of a platform with the group

Ziplining
They have an amazing zipline park, few kms North of Manuel Antonio, made of 11 zip lines including 1 of 1.6 km long!!!
So big I wasn't believing it until I did it... it lasted 1mn30s, impressive ;-) Another shorter (600m) but steeper line makes you go at 70-80 km/h... wow too!

With all the platforms and bridges between the lines, this was really a great way to discover the jungle and canopy.

Well, me ziplining..

The platforms and bridges are well organized into the forest, and are really the best way to discover the canopy. Clearly, you should not have heights / vertigo to do them!

The highest platform, standing at
60+m high!

Afraid to go? Never ;)

Fauna & flora
So, beside the fun of ziplining, this activity offers great inside views on Costa Rica rainforest, with so many various trees, plants, flowers, insects and animals. I cannot name them all, nor could post all the pics, but it is clearly very diverse and abundant!

View from a platform onto the rainforest

A sloth, or perezoso in Spanish
Lazy mammal moving so slowly... interesting

Few macros of flowers... no clue of the names, sorry!

From the high platforms, it is also possible to see the Pacific Ocean away:

There are some very strange palm trees, which are called "walking trees"! They do not have a fixed trunk, but a multitude of roots standing above the floor, which our guide explained us enable them to move few dozen cm per year pending the canopy light... Well, I was amused by this fact, but quickly looking on the web, this is a myth for tourists... ok, ok... still, this tree base is quite special!

The "walking palm trees"

Last but not least... the insects, particularly spiders: walking in the forest, you can see many, with even more spiderwebs. And let me tell you, the spiders are huge, you would not want to be bitten!

A huge spider. The body is, no kidding...
4-5cm!!!