Going going, back back to Manuel Antonio

One of the best things about being here for a few months is the ability to return to places I've already been in order to catch something I may have missed the first time. In the case of Manuel Antonio, that something was only the main reason most people go there: Manuel Antonio National Park, the 2nd most visited national park in the whole country, and the home of some of Costa Rica's most beautiful beaches.

Those beaches, however, just lost their Blue Flag status, which is nationwide recognition for eco-friendliness, because of the risk of sewage contamination (for more, see my article in The Tico Times earlier this week here).

You see, my weekend at the beach wasn't all fun in the sun (although there was plenty of that). I had four stories to write--a hotel review, feature on a local gift shop that opened a bar & grill, and a piece on a new clinic to rehab injured jungle animals, and, last but not least, a report on the sanitary issues at the national park. That may sound like a lot to handle in two and a half days, but things surprisingly worked out well.

I knew we were set for a good weekend when Avalon and I got out of the house late on Friday, had the slowest taxi driver known to man, and showed up 5 minutes late for our noon bus to Manuel Antonio. Running to the bus station from the curb (Avalon, you may be surprised to hear, is actually quite fast when need be) we managed to get on just in time. Sometimes, Tico Time (or the fact that most things here run late) is just what you need.

Yesterday, the country's health minister visited Manuel Antonio to check on the progress the park had made in cleaning up its act. There was a reasonable chance she would order the park closed--meaning I would have been there the last weekend possible--because of the sewage leaks from the bathrooms, a problem that is endemic to the entire park system and has existed for years.

Luckily, she agreed to give the park a few more months to come up with a long-term solution Hopefully, the specter of a closed-down Manuel Antonio will scare the environmental industry, as well as local businesses, into action. Closing the park would have been a huge blow to the local economy, but the country can't afford to neglect its environmental gems anymore.


And, on that somber note, I'll leave you with some more pictures of the beach and the park. Including monkeys, which lost a little bit of their luster when I realized how tame they had become in order to try to steal food from people. When some French tourists started feeding them, ignoring the orders of the park ranger, I had to get out of there.

Unfortunately, this sign was ignored: