Manuel Antonio National Park

We finally got our first free weekend! And of course, all 31 of us decided to go to Manuel Antonio National Park on the south Pacific coast. We all left together on Saturday morning around 6am which put us in the beach town, Quepos, around 9. A group of 5 of us spent the morning having brunch (where we saw our first sloth!) and walking down the mountain to the public beach of Manuel Antonio town. We finally found the rest of the crew at the house we rented a little while after! This house was amazing! All white, it was named after the white-faced monkey common here (capuchin). The living room was completely open to the weather and had an amazing, little infinity pool! The rest of the house consisted of 3 other floors with bedrooms and bathrooms practically enough for all of us. It was very surreal to get to all hangout and party in the house, kind of like being on the Real World or just being extremely rich!

The beach in Manuel Antonio national park

Of course, the house wasn't the only exciting part of the trip. After checking out the house, we headed down to the public beach and spent the rest of the afternoon bodysurfing, throwing a frisbee around and   exploring the beach. I'm pretty sure everyone got sunburnt.

Fun in the pool

A view of the pool from one
of the upstairs rooms...
this house was amazing...

The next morning, we decided to check out the national park. Manuel Antonio National Park is one of the most visited park in Costa Rica and known for its crazy monkeys and high number of sloths. Even though it was the low season, there were a lot of people on the beaches, granted it is definitely a pretty amazingly, beautiful park. The weather wasn't that great, so instead of hanging out too long on the beach, we decided to do a hike through a peninsula part of the park named La Catedral (The Cathedral). We had some great views of the pacific coast and all the small, rock islands jutting out of the water surrounding Costa Rica.

MY FIRST SLOTH! (even though he was kind of hidden)

The weekend was fantastic. It was really nice to get off campus and see more of this country! I'm excited for where our next free weekend will take us, but for now Nicaragua will do! We leave Wednesday at 2am and won't be back until the following week. The first few days will be on an island in Lake Nicaragua, Ometepe Island, where we will be working to map the trail system up one of two volcanos for the national park there. Then we head to Granada and Managua for the rest of the time!