Costa Rica: It’s amazing what you can see on a walk in Manuel Antonio.

It generally is not advised to walk along the main road in Manuel Antonio since there are no sidewalks and the cars like to zoom along at ridiculous speeds.  However, we did find that quite a lot more is observed when walking rather than riding the bus (for 50 cents).

One evening Nick and I were walking to a nice restaurant called Agua Azul at about sunset.  We noticed, as we did each day at sunset, that there was this amazing humming and whirring in the air that sounded like some sort of mechanical device failing.  We later learned that the cicadas make that sound during this time of the year in Manuel Antonio.  Don’t know if this is actually the species of cicada that makes the noise, but here’s a picture of one we saw. Also, as we walked towards the restaurant I spotted what looked like a squirrel crossing the road on a bright blue rope.  After looking more, we realized that the tail was far too long and far to unbushy to be a squirrel and that the front legs were very long and were in fact the arms of monkeys.  It turns out that a family of squirrel monkeys was crossing the road on one of the many “monkey bridges” that were strung up for just this purpose.  They were making quite a chittering racket as they talked and hurried each other along the rope in hopes of catching the sunset.

Another day we were walking along the road with our friend Emma and we spotted a family of toucans flying across the road.  Emma was able to get some wonderful pictures but we unfortunately did not have our camera at the time.  While Emma was taking her photos, Nick noticed that Luna, the 3-legged beagle (from a car accident, she walks quite well with only 3) that we’d met at the Backpackers Hostel was running up to greet us.  Not quite Costa Rican wildlife but she’s fuzzy, bubbly, friendly, and that’s good enough for me. Anyways, Nick and I pet her for a while and then Emma joined in.  After a few minutes, Luna picked up something along the roadside and began to excitedly play with it.  The dialog sounded something like this…

“Oh look she’s found something to play with.  How cute. What’ve you got there Luna?  What is that?  It looks like…  I think it’s a… Is it a?  I think it’s a dead bat.  Yes it is, you can see it’s little teeth.  That’s quite disgusting.  Luna, stop rubbing your ears into that thing.”  

We could’ve done without the dead bat, but overall, sometimes it’s worth it to walk.