We brave the hanging bridges of the rain forest canopy tour and search for wildlife in Manuel Antonio Park
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Our canopy tour had a bright and early start of 6:45. Although that wasn’t really a problem since we’ve been waking up at 5 am pretty much every day anyway. (It’s going to be interesting getting back on Pacific time when we get back.) Breakfast starts at 6:30 so getting something to eat was a bit tricky. Marion wasn’t willing to miss being late but I was. So I snarfed a very quick breakfast and of course it turned out we were late leaving anyway.
We headed over to a very nice beach and on the way, I realized I had forgotten my hat. The hat is a must on this trip and they were very nice and went back and got it. When they came back over, the zodiac driver was wearing it, which looked pretty funny. Not that the hat looked funny on him, it was just humorous somehow.
We headed down a path in the trees that lines the beach. And for the first time in a long while, it was a smooth flat path you didn’t have to look down to walk on. We came across a little rat-like rodent (but much bigger than a rat) along the way. They’re called Agouti.
Just prior to town we came to a river where for a dollar, they’ll take you across in these little rinky-dink row boats. They seemed very “authentic” somehow. One of them was named the “El Titanic” which was pretty funny. Hugh commented later that he couldn’t imagine an entrance to a national park in the US where you had to cross a river by boat to get there, which is really true. Anyway, we got into the village where things were just starting to pick up. It was too early for the tourists so most of the sidewalk stalls were not set up yet (which was good or we would have been very distracted).
The place we were going was about a 40 min drive. But the bus was late. So we had a brief chance to look around at the few items that were out for sale. Our tour companions were Matthew (the 2yr old), his mother and grandmother, and “big boob lady” and her friend. Not people we had really gelled with. Big boob lady, who we named for obvious reasons and her friend were the couple who held us up at the Panama Canal on the first day.
The bus came and we started heading inland. It was very interesting to see the town and the surrounding area. Except for Panama City, we’ve only been on the coast and come across just a few locals. The houses were small and tended to be cinder block (for cost and cooling reasons I suspect). There were a couple of third world tropical style bar/restaurants and little groceries which I always like for some reason. The town clearly is benefiting from the national park. Lots of hotels, condos, dive shops, kayak places, zip line tour signs etc.
To exit town we had to cross the river. This is why the bus was late. It’s a single lane bridge and they’re building a new one. Traffic was backed up pretty far. The bridge was originally the railroad bridge and you can still see the tracks. The guide said it’s called “Oh My God” bridge by the locals because when you see it, that’s what you say. It’s a metal trestle bridge, heavily rusted, barely the width of the bus. Not paved but covered with various pieces of metal and such. It doesn’t look like something you’d walk over without feeling a little uneasy, let alone drive. But since we were on the “waiting” side for awhile, we saw lots of 18-wheelers cross it so we figured we’d make it. Although as Audrey pointed out a lot of people had walked across the little bamboo bridge at the orchid place before she did and broke through it.
Once we crossed the bridge we headed into a large coconut palm plantation. Part of United Fruit’s efforts to make some money off of Costa Rica. They apparently had bought a large chunk of land to grow pineapples or bananas or something and couldn’t make it go. I’m not sure why because as the guide was describing it, Matthew, who was not enjoying the ride, or the wait, was crying and making a fuss. But it either had something to do with the trees not growing very well, or possibly labor unrest caused by workers unhappy with the chemicals being used. Regardless, they switched to coconut palms (for making coconut oil) and there was quite a stretch of them.
The last 7 km to the place were on a dirt road and not a smooth one. We could only go about 20 mph and it was quite bumpy. But kind of fun (although not for Matthew).
The canopy tour was about halfway up a mountain. A very pretty spot. We headed into the forest and as with all the forest walks we’ve done, we immediately started with the plant and wildlife explanations. Now in general I didn’t mind this but it got a bit excessive because we would go 100 ft and stop and talk some more. It was especially bad at the start of this one because the guide decided that since big boob lady was Mexican, he would repeat everything in Spanish as well. 20 ft, explanation, repeat explanation in Spanish, 20 more feet. Meanwhile, Matthew did *not* want to ride in the backpack, but had to because of the trail and it was an interesting start to the trip.
But that lessened a bit as we went on. This tour’s star attraction was to walk across hanging bridges at the top of the forest. To get there, we had to get to the top of the forest which meant climbing a lot of stairs. 800m of elevation. It didn’t bother us, hardy souls that we are, but grandma was having some trouble.
The guide had told us at the beginning to always stay behind him. And as he went along he’d slide his walking stick along the edges of the trail. We thought he was just playing or maybe looking for frogs or other animals to show us. After awhile we realized he was making sure there were no snakes.
The forest looked like all the other forests, which is to say lush and green and humid/muggy as hell. We were pretty much drenched by the time we had gone about 10 minutes. At the top of a flight of stairs we reached the first bridge station. They start you off with a pretty small one. About 6 feet. To get your feet wet as it were. The bridges hang from trees on either end. Two cables, one on each side, with mesh hanging down from the cables, attached to a metal “ladder” lying flat. On top of the ladder are boards. So you’re walking on what looks like two 1 by 6’s, with cables at about your armpits, with metal mesh between the cable and the boards. This about 300 feet above the river valley. Very cool. But not for those who are afraid of heights or unstable walkways (or both in this case).
We could only cross the bridges two people at a time which meant waiting a bit at the “tree houses” at the end of each bridge. Mom got tired of carrying Matthew around so she let him loose in the tree house. We were all a bit freaked out with him walking around but actually, it would have taken some effort for him to get out to fall.
The next bridge was maybe 20 or 30 feet long. A bit more interesting. Then two really long ones, around 100 meters each. They hung over a river valley with a waterfall on one side and rapids on the other. Very cool.
We came back over the same bridges to head back, then returned to the main entrance via a walk along the river. We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, just a few birds and a few lizards that our guide, Nathan found.
Lunch was served at the main entrance, cooked by a couple of very nice old Costa Rican ladies and it was quite tasty. They had cold towels for us too which felt great after the walk. In an interesting example of social interaction, we all sat at different tables, about as far from each other as we could. As I said, we didn’t gel.
We headed back to town the way we had come. And Matthew was just as happy about it. Plus Grandma, who was I think a bit spooked by the bridges and somewhat embarrassed by the crying kept talking and talking to no one in particular it seemed. Oh look, that place is for sale, oh we should tell so and so about the something or other and on and on. We were screaming just shut up already, but only in our heads. We were very polite. To top if off she made us stop for a picture of a restaurant made out of an old C-130 plane. Okay, it was kind of cool, but she had given the other guy on the tour grief (not to his face) about stopping in the middle of one of the bridges for a picture, preventing them from crossing. The whole point of the tour was to cross the bridges and see the canopy so it seemed perfectly reasonable to me to stop *there* for a picture. Ah well.
Anyway, we got back to town and dumped our companions as quickly as we could. We were pretty fried so we didn’t do much shopping but we did manage to get me a T-shirt. My only souvenir. When we got back to the river area, the tide was out and the river was maybe 4 feet across. So no boats this time, just walking. There was a troop of monkeys there though. Someone had some fruit out on a table and they were running around grabbing it. I bet monkeys are a real pest but for a few minutes, they’re very cute.
We got back to the park entrance and dutifully attempted to show our park tickets to the guards there. But they didn’t seem to care. They weren’t even in the little booth. They were sitting out back with their feet up. “Pura Vida” they said (the national slogan) and waved us on. Behind the entrance we came upon a very large iguana sunning himself. I got a good picture of him. We saw more as we walked back to the beach station including one who ran across the path. They look very odd when they run.
We were pretty tired and ready to call it a day but we hadn’t yet seen Manual Antonio park which was the “grand finale”. We stopped at the beach station for a rest and a drink and discovered that the monkeys had been running around trying to grab anything not nailed down. We stowed the stuff we didn’t want to carry in what we hoped was not a prime monkey zone and headed into the park.
The path started along a beautiful crescent beach in the middle of a bay. There were lots of folks out swimming and sunning themselves. The first animals we saw were raccoons. But they were a bit odd. Their bodies looked like the raccoons that we know but their legs were longer and weirdly shaped. They looked like a small child had tried to draw them and hadn’t gotten it quite right.
Past the beach we started heading into the forest. We had to make a choice which way to go. There were two paths that didn’t loop and probably only time for one of them. We took the one that seemed to go away from the main road and it quickly turned into much the same forest as we had been seeing. But the good news was we could go at our own pace and no one else was around.
We started hearing a crunching noise that sounded a lot like the noise that our kitties make when eating their dry food. Finally Marion spotted a couple of Agouti in the woods who were eating something that was making the noise. I commented that from a Darwinian Theory standpoint, it seemed like making noise while you eat was not a good way to stay uneaten yourself but I guess it’s working for them.
We walked awhile longer and saw nothing. No monkeys or sloths which are the prime viewing mammals in the park. So we decided to abandon this path and head down the other one, which turned out to be a good choice. Marion (our prime nature spotter) found a sloth high up in a tree. They don’t do much, sloths. This one was pretty much wrapped around the trunk and not going anywhere for awhile. But we felt quite pleased with ourselves for having found one without help.
Farther down the trail I spotted a bird flying and as I watched it land I noticed movement behind it. It was monkeys and the more we watched the more we realized it was lots of monkeys. They were high up in the trees and moving around, so not good for photos but very fun to watch. They were moving from tree to tree, jumping through the air and catching themselves in the leafy parts of the branches at the end of limbs. At one point they jumped across the trail over our heads.
We walked down to where the trail started exiting the park where we saw some sort of white wading bird in the river, then we had to head back to get on the boat.
Back at the beach stations, the monkeys were back, up in the trees above the water/juice station. Luckily they hadn’t found our purchases or shoes and what not.
Then back to the boat for our final night on board. We were both pretty tired. We had done lots of hiking that day and a fair amount the days previous.
One of the crew members took pictures during the trip and put together a slide presentation that was a lot of fun. It was a nice way to recap what we did and she made more of an effort to take pictures of the people than I did. There were a couple of nice ones of us in there too. Charlie, the photographer who was on board also put some in. He had some amazing ones of the Embera and the orchids. The colors just popped from the screen. I need to figure out how he does that.
For our final briefing, the crew came out and said their goodbyes which was quite nice as did the wait staff during dinner. Then it was time to pack everything up which was not an easy exercise, especially when trying to keep the few remaining clean items clean. But we managed.
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