Having a great day with the monkeys and squirrel-rabbits in Manuel Antonio !
An uneventful trip by local buses took us to Manuel Antonio ! The site of the most popular national park in the country , as well as the gay capital of Costa Rica…but we wer there for the national park!
We found our self a nice hotel which was walking distance from both the beach and the park. It took some real effort to find a decent place though. First we took a room at a place by the beach called Cabana Pisces. The room was super depressing, but we decided to take it as it was cheap, and as there were loads of squirrel monkeys(!) in the trees around the hotel. When we found out that the mosquito netting was full of holes and that the room was filled by those little parasites we instantly checked out and went looking for a new place.We went to the place which is listed first in Lonely Planet called Cabinas Ramirez.
The rooms were like 35$(even though the sign in the road said 20$) and absolutely the most crappy rooms I`ve seen , and I`ve stayed in loads of bad hostels in my travelling time. The room looked like something out of a horror movie (“the hostel”), and smelled like wunderbaums(3 of them on the door) and the walls were full of holes for the mosquitoes to enter.
And the really strange thing is that just 50 meters from this dump there is a super nice modern hotel with clean A/C room with hot showers and cable TV + free internet for 30$ ! Thank god that it`s the low season now , almost no tourists here…the hotel we found would normally cost 70$ pr night !
We decided to do a dive here as it was our last chance for a dive in the pacific ocean ! Then I have Dived in 5 different oceans around the world ! Most of my dives in the Atlantic though!
The dive masters were pretty bad though.
What absolutely saved the dive was that at the end of the dive we saw a beautiful big green sea turtle swimming around slowly. It was amazing to see, and I didn’t try to ride with the turtle as I did once when I was young and stupid !
We also saw 3 reef sharks hiding in a little cave, and a big sting ray sleeping on the sandy bottom.
After the dive we went straight through the Manuel Antonio national park. Fortunately it was a small park, so it was no problem to see every part of it in the 4 hours we had left until darkness was coming.
The park was teeming with life, squirrel monkeys and howler monkeys in all the trees. The book of books say that you should consider yourself lucky if you see one….well I would say that it should take a lot of effort to not see one of them as they are all over this park. One of the things that has drawn them out of the park is local hotels that are feeding them so they will stay in the trees around the hotel and draw guests. This is a trick which obviously works, as we would never have taken the room in the first hotel we found if it wouldn’t have been for all those nice monkeys in the garden !
After seeing just about every trail in the park we went for some beach time.
The time until sunset we spent in these crazy big waves on the 4th. Beach of Manuel Antonio. That was hysterically funny to be thrown around by these 3-4 meter tall waves , we spent like an hour playing in the waves, and then enjoying a spectacular sunset from the beach.
On Coco Beach we got great ameneties - swimming pool, Wi-fi , on-site resturant and our room was really nice too - comfy bed, cable TV , refrigerator for our beers, Aircon+fan, and a super nice bathroom with hot water shower.
The price of 30$ is good, but in the high season it is 70$.
Have some patience with the Vietnamese owner…she is nicer then it seems…
Even Cabinas Pisces which is a 100 meters further up the road would be a better deal..
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This place is nicely located in the jungle surrounding the main beach. The location is very good, as it is only a short walk on the trail down to the beach. Another reason to stay here would be the colony of squirrel monkies living in the trees around the hotel, although morally ths could also be seen as a reason not to stay here as these kind of hotels are feeding the monkies to make them stay around the hotel. This is drawing the monkies out of their habitat in the national park, and makes them dependant on getting fed. This again can make them less capable of looking for food themselves, so its not a good cycle.
The rooms here are nothing to write home about, but it could be worse(read my review on Cabinas Ramirez just down the street)
The room is exceptionally uncosy with a super strong light bulb in the middle of the room. The bathroom is basic, but functional. The main reason for not staying here is the lack of proper mosquito control. In our bathroom there was hundreds of mosquitoes due to a big gap in the net covering the window. This is simply not good enough , you CANNOT stay in the rainforrest in the rainy season without mosquito protection ! You would be eaten alive !
