Barrys Aventuras de Costa Rica: Manuel Antonio

We spent Thanksgiving weekend at Manuel Antonio National Park, which was beautiful but a little sad for me too because I felt disconnected from home. Thanksgiving is an American holiday and we are obviously far from the USA! We had a great dinner though, at a restaurant owned by a Polish-American-Costa Rican. We have plenty to be grateful for, and its hard to feel too sorry for yourself with the experiences we are having, and the beautiful places we've seen down here. Manuel Antonio is very busy and touristy but the beach and the animals make it worth it. We saw 3 kinds of monkeys, a deer, turtles, birds, raccoons.

We also visited the Rainmaker Park, which is a private park nearby Manuel Antonio. It is truly a hidden jem! We were one of few people there on a busy weekend, almost like having the whole jungle to ourselves. They have many hanging bridges up next to the tops of the trees, such a cool feeling to be high in the canopy.

We were cooling off in a waterfall in the park when it started to rain. They are not joking around about the name of this park! While we were walking back to the lodge, it started raining so hard that I thought to myself, "there is NO WAY more water can possible come out of the sky". Then it would rain a little harder. and harder. It was like standing inside a high pressure shower. We started to get worried about the camera (even under a rain jacket inside a case) and also the amount of water coming down the "stream"!! It turned into a raging brown river in minutes! Also very fascinating were the very cute black and green frogs that came out everywhere in the rain! I couldn't get a picture of them obviously, but they were fun to see.