Costa Rica: Wildlife in pictures

I found it really hard to choose the photos to accompany my post about Costa Rica’s wildlife because I saw so many incredible creatures I couldn’t decide which ones to feature.

So rather than leave those photos on my hard drive never to see the light of day again, I’ve put together an extra post to share them – I hope you like them!

The photo above is of a howler monkey sitting in a tree near a roadside café close to Lake Arenal. Below is a sloth climbing a tree in Manuel Antonio National Park.

This beautiful bird was sitting in a tree in the thick tropical rainforest of Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges Park.

This raccoon was sneaking across one of the beaches in Manuel Antonio National Park looking to rifle through the bags of unsuspecting visitors.

A tiny lizard pops its head up from among the leaves in Manuel Antonio National Park.

I’m normally scared of spiders, but it’s hard to be afraid of such delicate looking creatures. They were all over this plant in Arenal Volcano National Park.

On our second day in Costa Rica, we stopped at a roadside café and found these magnificent iguanas sauntering around outside. The male had turned orange because it was mating season.

I stupidly and accidentally stood on an ant’s nest while trying to take this photo of the only macaw I saw in Costa Rica. It might not be the best photo of a macaw, but it caused me a foot’s worth of pain so I’m including it.

A gorgeous green and gold beetle on a leaf in a park in Monteverde.

A (very obviously) male howler monkey stares at the camera while walking across some wires near Lake Arenal.

One of my first encounters with a frog in Costa Rica was with this teeny orange critter while on a night-time frog hunt near La Fortuna.