Parque National Manual Antonio, Monkeys

There were loads of different types of monkeys in the national park, bigs ones way up in the trees and smaller whited faced ones in the lower canopy.

As we were walking through a trail up from the beach we heard a pack of them in the trees and we waited. To our surprise they came right past us, I dont know who was more scared!

The older ones had sharp dirty teeth, but the younger ones were pretty cute. We stayed back and let them pass through, quite an experience!

Parque National Manual Antonio, sloths

This park is full of life, here is a beautiful example off the Costa Rican two-toed (Choloepus hoffmanni) sloth.

They were just hanging out in the trees about 30ft above our heads. The green tinge to their coat is from an alguie which sticks to them in the humid rainy seasons, I can feel for them as I am currently going through three t-shirts a day - it's so hot and humid here!

Check out the video, don't you think the face look errily human, like a small boys head on an extra large, wet, teddy bear...

Costa Rica - Parque National Manual Antonio

Continuing our travels down the coast exploring national parks, we're in a port town called Quepos. Just 9km down the coast is Parque National Manual Antonio, a coastal national park which was saved from developers in 1972 (although Maudie helped move some trees today...).

There are loads of animals in this park, and it's split on the peninsular is not unlike Railay beach in Thailand, a 50 meter shard of beach on each side connecting a bulb of land in the sea to the mainland.

But what the developers missed was the worlds gain, this beautiful area has epic trails from the beaches through the cliffs, along palmforests and tropical rainforest. And the animals were absolutely fantastic. Here are the landscape images, animal videos will follow...

Costa Rica - Parque National Carara

The Carara national parque is about 1km from the Crocodile bridge, it straddles the dry forests of the northwest and the rainforest's of the Pacific lowlands. And it's HOT!

We went there in search of Scarlet Macaws, having read all about them in the book 'Last of the Macaws', a true Belizian story about one woman's plight to save the last 200 birds in Belize (before the Canadian electricity company Fortis built a dam and wiped out their habitat).

The place is literally buzzing with life and sounds, we set off at 7am and managed to see the macaws deep in their daytime nesting spot high in the trees (at night they fly to the mangroves on the coast to take refuge in a safer area). The monkeys were huge, about 3.5ft tall and they moved in packs, the video really doesn't do their tree jumping beauty justice! You can hear the screeching background noise of the bugs and birds, amazing.

There was so much growing - everywhere fruit trees were spilling out treats for the residents and the size of the older trees were outstanding, some 250ft tall and everything seemed to exist perfectly together. We spent 5 hours exploring the trails with our heads permanently cranked towards the jungle canopy, fabulous fun.

Crocodile Bridge at Carara National Park, Costa Rica

Check out the size of these American Crocodiles! These guys live just south of Parque National Carara in the Rio Tarcoles, we spotted these guys underneath the aptly nick-named Crocodile Bridge.

As its the dry season it was easier to see them and we counted about 20... I was quite scared of falling off the bridge! They were up to about 3 meters long and so prehistoric, you could watch them for hours swimming up and down the river using their tails to direct them in the currents.

We ended up staying right next to them at Los Cocodrilos hostel...

Arriving in Costa Rica, San Jose

Now we're in Costa Rica, we're really excited to be here as we've wanted to visit for so long. We've spent a couple of days in San Jose staying in a cool little hostel in a great neighbourhood only a few mins from the city center. San Jose is a really modern city - we've enjoyed being here and checking out the local restuarants, finding a decent book store and catching up with friends and family with the wonders of the net! The simple things...

Tomorrow we're travelling towards the Pacific coast to Carara National Park where we're hoping to see macaws and monkeys...exciting stuff!

Surfing Maderas - Nicaragua

Maderas is known as the best beach break in Nicaragua, and one of the best in Central America and is packed full of local & gringo pro's come high tide. But I made sure not to get in their way and got lots of useful info from the good guys and a cool chick called Helena. I got a board for just 5 bucks a day from the surf shack and loved being able to just wonder down to the ocean each day, such a treat.

The beach had such a cool vibe, it was perfect for getting some beginners practice in... here's some great pics Pete took on our last day when he came down to meet me for a sundowner at the surf shack!