Caffeine Central: Weekend in Manuel Antonio National Park

I have just got back from an amazing weekend exploring Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica's smallest but most highly regarded national park. It was created in 1972 and it's 1700 acres is home to many of Costa Rica's animals and endangered species. Playa Manuel Antonio was rated number 17 out of 25 top beaches in the world on trip advisor.. and while it was beautiful, it was no New Chums (but i'm bias!).

After catching a bus for 4 hours (an air-conditioned, new and uncrowded bus I must add - how boring after Nicaragua's chicken buses) I arrived at Manuel Antonio. First thing I saw after stepping off the bus was a sushi restaurant, so much excitement, and it was lunchtime, so went straight in there. It was pretty delicious, but after two months of no sushi I think anything would have tasted great!

My was right on the beach, Hotel Verde Mar, which was ideal. It was also the home to a bunch of super cute white faced monkeys, and a sloth!

I did a tour of the national park, which was really good as it's so hot there that most of the animals are up in the trees all day. Our guide, however, knew where the animals were and had a large set of binoculars. On the tour I met some girls from the states, and did a canopy jungle tour with them the following day. This was crazy fun, we were metres in the air climbing high ropes and flying down huge flying foxes. We even went upside down on one flying fox, much more scary than it looked.