Sunday 4th January 2026
Sunday morning dawned hot and steamy. Darwin build-up level hot and steamy. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised as we are at sea level at approximately nine degrees north.
The main activity for today was to be a guided walk in the National Park. Us and 6,000 of our closest friends. While the smallest national park in Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio is apparently the 2nd most visited park in Latin America after Machu Pichu in Peru. And it seemed like they were all visiting with us on Sunday.
After about a forty minute queue to get in we were met by our guide , Diego. Like every one of our guides in this trip he was passionate about the environment and extremely well prepared/ informed about it.
We, and sixty million others, walked along a path with our guide spotting things and pointing them out. Whilst definitely not a ‘wilderness’ experience there were , surprisingly, some cool things spotted, including a couple of rare birds of prey:
A video of the three- toed tree sloth we saw, it had a baby on its chest ( hard to make out):
Then we saw a bunch of other stuff:
At the end of the path Diego popped smoke and left us for another crowded lap . There were troops of Capuchin monkeys up to no good, you had to keep an eye on your stuff at all times, amusing vid of monkey see , monkey do:
A Capuchin monkey gallery:
Then we spent some time swimming at the National Park Beach:
And Playa Espadilla:
The afternoon was spent keeping cool in the hotel pool. This was followed by dinner out with the group and another spectacular sunset over the Pacific.
Ness’ and Mark’s Wandering 