Manuel Antonio: the wildlife and the crowds

Everywhere else in Costa Rica I had to work to see animals. At Manuel Antonio they turned up at the pool.

That is not a figure of speech. Monkeys came through the trees over the terrace, close enough that you stopped
watching the water and started watching them. A bird of prey sat on the balustrade, unbothered. Macaws went over in
pairs, making the noise macaws make, which is nothing like the noise you expect from something that beautiful. After
days of standing in rainforest scanning the canopy for a shape that does not move, having the wildlife arrive under
its own steam was faintly comic.

That ease is the whole argument for this stretch of coast, and it is a real one. If you have limited time and you
came to Costa Rica for animals, this is the highest-probability place I went.

The honest other half is that everyone else has worked that out too. This is the busiest coastline in the country. The
beach below the point is wide and good-looking and, on an ordinary afternoon, full – umbrellas, vendors, boats,
people. Nothing about it is quiet or secret, and prices reflect what the place knows about itself. I would not send
anyone here for solitude, and I found the Pacific beaches the weakest part of the country.

So take it for what it is: an unusually reliable place to see wild animals doing ordinary things, attached to a
crowded beach. Stay somewhere with trees around it rather than sand in front of it, look up more than you look out,
and let the coast be the backdrop rather than the reason.