August 16, 2013 / Manuel Antonio

Friday was our last full day in Costa Rica. After breakfast, we were picked up by Wilbur, our guide for the trip to national park. It was raining and kept raining for more than 2 hours. Out here all activities are good, “rain or shine”. We were walking in the rain, with our rain gear, but that made spotting animals hard and taking photographs even harder.

That said, we did get to see our fair share of flora and fauna even on this rainy day. Did you realize a male spider is 1/10th the size of a female? And the webs they weave are super strong? We got to see a very colorful crab called Halloween crab, the bright yellow and venomous eyelash viper, hermit crabs, more iguanas and lizards, raccoons, agouti, the laughing falcon, two toed and three toed sloths.

The rain finally let up as we reached the beautiful beach nestled inside the national park. The water looked great and azure blue. Several folks decided to swim, we stayed put on the shores. We met a very nice American family from Orange country, CA and another backpacker from San Francisco. It is amazing how when you start a tour with strangers, you are circumspect in the beginning but end up being very comfortable with each other by the time the tour ends.

We went back to Raphael’s Terraza for lunch again – our only repeat restaurant “by choice”. Until now, all the sloths we saw were way up in the tree – and they appeared as blobs most of the time. We started calling them “sloth blobs”. Interestingly, in the trees by the restaurant were couple of three toed sloths putting on the best sloth show for us. Following lunch, we walked back to the beach. And just as we reached there, it started raining again. We tried waiting it out, but the rain wasn’t letting up. We took a local bus back to the hotel avoiding the 30 minute walk back uphill in rain. It was nearly 4 pm and it didn’t stop raining that day at all. It just lightened up around 7 pm when I dashed out to get pizza back to our room. Interestingly, when they made the pizza, each slice had just one topping each. All the onions were on one slice; all the bell peppers were on another; all the tomatoes on one… you get the idea. Jaya and I spent bulk of the evening drying up the clothes, shoes and packing up while the girls were lounging in style. Pleasures of parenting 🙂