The Central Pacific zone is a beautiful stretch of lowland pasture that, a few kilometers inland, heaves up into the Fila de Bustamente, a line of hills covered partially in thick forest and partially in pastureland. Hectares and hectares of palm oil plantations cover the area surrounding Parrita and Quepos. Passing these plantations, you might notice both tall palm trees and stunted ones. The latter are the genetically modified version, bred that way so workers wouldn’t have to climb the trees to harvest the fruit. (Exporters, by the way, did the same thing with bananas, which used to grow on full-out trees. Today, the bunches hang at about head level.)

Like many areas of Costa Rica, the Central Pacific suffered significant deforestation for agricultural purposes. A few modern efforts have helped the land recover somewhat. Foreigners who bought land around Manuel Antonio in the 1970s began reforesting the area, and now a number of environmental groups run by locals and expatriates focus on reforestation. The goal is to create biological corridors that connect discrete forested areas and broaden the mating grounds of monkeys and other wildlife populations.

Manuel Antonio National Park includes 687 hectares of land and 55,000 hectares of a marine reserve. The park has primary and secondary forest, mangroves and beach vegetation. It’s home to many animals in danger of extinction, including the Titi monkey. Other animals often spotted include white-nosed coatis, raccoons, and white-faced monkeys. Flora includes three types of mangrove, the bully tree, cedar, the cow tree and the silk cotton tree.

Manuel Antonio was first made into a park when a group of foreigners bought the land and then pressured the government to turn it into a state reserve.

Temperatures in the Central Pacific range between the upper seventies at night up to the mid-nineties by mid-day. Humidity can reach quite high depending on precipitation. Rain often comes in the form of thunder storms during the rainy season.