Hempstead Safari: Pura Vida Costa Rica

Nature / Beach Day

We started the day at Manuel Antonio National Park. This is a nature reserve on the coast, home to many species of lizards, sloths.

It is adjacent to a beautiful public beach in a beautiful bay. The park itself has its own beautiful beach in its own beautiful bay, but we will have to hike a while through the forest to get there.

**Photos on hike to be added later**

Here's the beach. Fortunately we have some time to enjoy our surroundings.

And we have company... These are endearingly referred to as the "bad monkeys" or the "monkey mafia". They are acclimated to humans and interested in their stuff. Because new people are cycled in and out of here throughout each day, they get new unsuspecting victims every thirty minutes or so.

As long as you secure your stuff, it is easy to get nice and close for a picture. These were taken by Sarah with her iPhone.

After hiking out we had a nice lunch before heading off to the public beach to relax and surf a bit.

Now, I haven't shared much about our meals but it seems like lunch and dinner consist of exactly the same elements as our first meal with limited variety. You can get rice and beans, rice chicken and beans, beans and rice, or beans rice and fish. I may post more photos as we conclude the trip, simply to demonstrate the point. Fortunately, it's a good meal or if be going nuts.

Here's the public beach. Now Alejandro, our tour guide, has some friends that run a surf school on this beach. They set us up with beach chairs, beers, shade, and some surf lessons for the kids. Caitlyn was al over it, but Norah opted out, due to the fact that she had already had lessons last week.

Surfer girl got up 3 or 4 times and only got hurt 2 or 3, so I'd say she did pretty well.

Here's a nice little surf beach view.

Some might say the surf instructors made for a nicer view but luckily we don't have any pictures of those guys.

After getting out of the sun and cleaning off a bit, we headed off for nice sunset dinner with a view. Little did we know that we would get our best view of sloth... No joke... Crossing the road. How long do you think that takes?

...and I don't know, because traffic became impatient with the sloth and our bus stopped in front of it, so someone picked it up and put it on a nearby tree before it had a chance it finish its journey.