Animals and Beaches

Hello!  Manuel Antonio and Quepos were absolutely fabulous!  Normally, I don’t like the Pacific Beach as much as others because the water tends to be dark and rough.  But, this beach was beautiful.  The water was clear with just the right amount of waves and the sand was clean and didn’t have many rocks.  We had a 30-minute hike to get to the beach because it is located in private park.  I took quite a bit more time on than 30 minutes to get there because there were so many animals to see on the way there!  Here are just a few of the things that I saw:

* Congo Monkeys

* Squirrel Monkeys

* A large spider that I can’t remember the name of

* Two and three-toed sloths

* Yellow viper – this one was the most interesting because one strike from this snake will kill a human.  This snake is only about a foot long but has one of the most painful bites

We spent an awesome day on the beach together.  I would say that most of the students loved to spend time relaxing on the sand but there were a few that didn’t.  My co-leader hates the beach, so she didn’t have much fun that day.  Many of the students loved body surfing in the waves and watching all of the wildlife.  A few of my students had a run in with jellyfish and we had three students get stung.  Luckily, it was just a mild jelly and nothing that a little vinegar couldn’t take care of. 

We had to have our guides watch the food and the backpacks the entire time because there are very large raccoons and white-faced monkeys that try to steal things.  The guide said that the monkeys are so intelligent that they will take a backpack and leave a piece of fruit in exchange.  There was one part of the wildlife that I didn’t like though – it was the large lizards that were all over the beach.  They were around 2 feet long each.  At first they didn’t bother me but once I started eating fruit, they swarmed me.  One of the lizards got spooked and tried to look for an escape route.  That escape route, unfortunately, was directly across my legs.  It certainly feels strange to have a giant lizard run across your legs!

Tomorrow is my host family stay!

Love,

C