Manuel Antonio National Park
The peninsula that contains Manuel Antonio National Park is a microcosm of Costa Rica’s beautiful west coast. Its coastline features wide, sandy beaches, palm trees, wild plants, and sea stacks that are accessible only by hiking in. A couple of side trails on the park’s eastern side offer views of remote beaches with no established accessibility, including Playa Puerto Escondido and the Punta Serrucho coastline.
Manuel Antonio NP’s interior is the real highlight, however, as it is a dense, tropical lowland wet forest packed with animals. Several trails traverse the forest, navigating through habitats for three-toed sloths, monkeys, and iguanas. Despite the park’s relatively small size, three distinct species of monkeys live in the jungle: capuchin white-faced monkeys, howler monkeys, and squirrel monkeys.
Playa Espadilla
Playa Espadilla (Espadilla Beach), situated northwest of the Manuel Antonio peninsula, is a popular beach with locals and tourists alike. Most of the coastline is sandy and borders beautiful rows of palm trees. Like all of Costa Rica’s west coast, the water temperature is warm compared to North America’s Pacific beaches.
Large sea stacks and rocky islands sit far offshore, but several stacks and interesting rock formations closer to the waves occupy the southern end of the beach (pictured). The rocks here make swimming dangerous, so it is often quite easy to obtain a landscape photograph. Because the beach faces west, sunsets are typically more colorful than sunrises.
Marino Ballena National Park
Roughly translated as "Marine Whale" National Park, Marino Ballena is a protected coastal area with a double meaning. The park is known for being the southernmost point in the North American humpback whale’s migration. These whales are typically spotted between December and April. During low tide, the sandbar that appears on the beach looks like the tail of a whale when seen from above. Thus, the "whale" portion of the name comes from both of these facts.
The national park protects a series of palm tree-dominated beaches in addition to the "whale" beach, including Uvita Beach, Arco Beach, Ballena Beach, and others. Inland, the mountainous jungle overlooking the beach is home to lush environments with elegant waterfalls, particularly during the wet season.
Piedras blancas National Park
There are four protected areas surrounding Golfo Dulce, an inlet (or bay) in southern Costa Rica that leads to the Pacific Ocean. Together, the parks preserve secondary forest and primary (old-growth) forest from logging and agriculture. Piedras Blancas is one of these, and the giant trees that live within its boundaries are part of a stunning display of ancient rainforest that once covered all of Central America.
All of the national park’s trails are on the eastern end, and the biggest trees are located on two of these trails. The first, Circuito La Ceiba, follows the Nicuesa ravine and contains a kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) that is perhaps the largest in the park (pictured below). This giant has been growing for hundreds of years, and its enormous buttressed legs stabilize its massive frame. The second, Sendero San Josecito, penetrates the southern portion of the park and climbs up to a high ridge. This ridge is punctuated by a diversity of megaflora—namely groves of huge Parkia pendula, strangler figs, walking palms, and others—for several kilometers. The trail then drops a few hundred meters and traverses varying floral environments before ending at sea level on a Golfo Dulce beach.
