If you ever have the pleasure of visiting Costa Rica, you'll likely run across many interseting creatures.
Seen here (at right) is the Costa Rican version of the Racoon. We saw a family of these creatures just walking along the road while
we were on our way over to the boat ride across Lake Arenal. I opened up the van door to get a closer look, and one of them just
walked right up to me, so I got a closeup shot.
If you're creeped out by insects, this may not be the ideal vacation for you. We saw a lot of interesting ones
during our trip. At Si Como No, this little (or should I say big) critter was just hanging out on the wall of our building. Laurie put
her hand next to it for reference. It really was about 6 inches long.
We also saw a colony of leaf cutter ants at one of the butterfly farms, although I didn't get any pictures of
them. If you get a chance to watch them at work, you'll see they are really pretty amazing. We saw this massive sized moth (seen right)
while staying at Tabacon. It was a little bigger than my pair of sunglasses that I put in the picture for referenece.
If you move your mouse over the top left hand picture (above the fish icons), you'll see a sloth. At top right,
you'll see a pair of black head vultures, at bottom right, a lizard and at bottom left the family of racoon like citters. We saw the
majority of the animals in Manuel Antonio National park. Seen Left here is a tiny sand crab, making his way across the jungle floor near
the beach.
We also saw a TON of monkeys in Manuel Antonio. Seen here is the best closeup I could get of them. I did get a
lot more pictures of them - they were hamming it up for all of the tourists that were going through the park. Swinging all over the place,
scrounging for food, and playing.
People told us not to bring any valuables to the beach, so that theft could be prevented. What they didn't tell us
is that humans are generally not the thieves. While sitting on the beach, we noticed a couple next to us get up and go into the water. They'd
left their belongings under the shade of an overhanging tree branch. While they were in the water, one of the monkeys shimmied down the branch,
and snagged their food bag! He went back up the tree and started rummaging through it. By the time the people noticed, he had already started
tossing stuff down. Seen at left is the monkey (at the top), and the discarded food bag that he no longer needed. I guess the monkey didn't care
much for the plastic, but he kept the food inside and scampered off!
