Costa Rica Part 2

After spending two nights in San Jose, we were excited to go to beautiful Manuel Antonio. It is in the South Western part of Costa Rica right on the ocean. We took a shared shuttle. It was about a 2 hour drive. 

We stopped by a bridge to see the crocodiles. I guess these crocodiles have been here for a long time. It is a polluted river so they tried to relocate them. Because crocodiles are so territorial, they made their way back so they just leave them alone. 

The bridge was a little scary....I'm just walking back to the shuttle van.

This is what the police ride around on.....cracked me up. They are more like dirt bikes!

We got to our resort which was called Tulemar. It was 33 acres of bungelows and houses in the rain forest. It was built on a steep hillside so everyone has a view. Our room wasn't quite ready so they took us to the beach and we ordered lunch.

There was a TON of wildlife around Tulemar. 

There were three kinds of monkeys. This white faced monkey is called a Capuchin.

Outside our window in the tree was a sloth. These animals are super interesting. They sleep much of their life and they move SUPER slow. They have a whole eco-system on their bodies....moths, beetles, termites make their home in the thick fur. Once a week they leave the tree and come down to dig a hole that they poop in and then back to the tree they go. Sloths aren't found in many areas of the world so it was interesting to watch this guy outside our window. We named him Sherman.

I was really excited to go to church while we were there. They rent this building and they are a branch. It is located in the nearby town of Quepos which was about 5 minutes from where we were staying. We went to sacrament meeting only. Everyone was super friendly. Even young kids came to welcome us by shaking our hands. They didn't have a piano or a keyboard....someone was in charge of running the CD player for the hymns.

In Costa Rica the smaller "mom and pop" restaurants are called "Sodas". This was a soda we heard about that had amazing homemade Costa Rican food. 

Our room was like a hotel room. There was a small bungelow with a room on the top that a couple owned and then they rented out two rooms on the bottom. It was really nice. It had a kitchenette so we could make some of our meals there to save money. Here is the view from our window.

There were 4 pools in the resort. This pool was close to us. It was so relaxing and we were the only ones there!

Monkeys were everywhere! The black monkeys are called howler monkeys. They really do howl. It is kind of a scary noise they make.

Look at this baby hanging on. The mama didn't slow down at all. She was just jumping around and I was worried the baby was going to fall!

There were two different nature trails you could take down to the beach if you didn't want to just walk on the road. 

These land crabs were so weird. They were all along the nature trail. They were big and so bright in color, I thought maybe someone had painted them with neon spray paint.  

Our beach.....only people staying at Tulemar could reach our beach! They had towels, chairs, kayaks, etc. for us to use.

Powell looking at something with his Go-Pro on a pole. Probably a sloth!

This van was available to take us up and down the hill (it was super steep and tiring) if we didn't feel like walking.

Dinner at El Tipico down the road from our hotel.

This was the ice cream shop near El Tipico. They cut up a bunch of fresh fruit like pineapple, papaya, watermelon, etc. and then put ice cream on top. It was better than I thought it would be. It tasted super refreshing. The fruit was cold and the ice cream melted around the fruit.

One of the pools we decided to cool off in after walking to dinner!