2012 Costa Rica – Quepos
For our last stop in Costa Rica we drove to Quepos which was near the national park area of Manuel Antonio. I thought it was a bit of a dump but Federika thought it had “character” which I suppose was true but you could say the same thing about Alcatraz. We met up with Federika’s friend Zaida and her daughter and the next day we all went to the beach which was part of the national park. It was distinguishable from a normal beach by the fact you had to pay to get in and couldn’t park anywhere near it. As far as the national park was concerned, there wasn’t much to see although we did see a guide point to a tree and tell his audience proudly,
“That is a toxic tree.”
Ten minutes later he was still going on about the tree and its toxicity. I suppose the information would have been invaluable to anyone in the habit of eating trees but for anyone else, I suspect it was just boring.
We enjoyed our day on the beach and did get some animal action when we heard some young girls screaming not far from us. A family of monkeys had stolen a bag of crisps and were in the trees right next to us. They were blue monkeys and were cute little fellas that seemed to like the attention. Later on, one of them went carefully through a woman’s handbag taking out all the rubbish like a camera, purse, and mobile phone, in search of something to eat. Shortly after that, there was more shouting further down the beach when a family of racoons invited themselves to family lunch. I thought it was well worth the entrance fee just to get so close to these animals but most people didn’t seem to want them anywhere near them and kept shooing them away. 
Having paid for access to the beach I was a little pissed off when the wardens came around at 4 pm telling us to leave as they were going to close the park. We ended up going to a free beach which I liked just as much and it had the advantage that unlike the national park it had restaurants so we didn’t have to mess around with a packed lunch when we went again the next day.
It was one of the best areas in the world for big game fishing so I would have loved to have gone but the prices were horrendous. For a full-day boat charter it was $1200. You could share the cost with other people but the last thing I wanted to do was go on a once-in-a-lifetime fishing expedition and have the person next to me spend three hours landing a fish while I sat and watched him. It was one of those things that would have to remain on my bucket list.
2012 USA and Costa Rica
