Water adventures on the Carribean coast

Welcome back dear followers. It’s time for a new update. I am writing this report while sitting in a real backpackers hostel in San Jose. Although I’ve been in this country for almost 1,5 months now, it’s actually my first day in the Capital. As I might remember, the day I arrived here I went inmediately towards the ‘study the rainforest’ project. And Ididn’t regret it, because San Jose is just a big city with a lot of poverty and not much to see or do apart from shopping for clothes or terrible plastic toys. So there hardly any tourists here and apart from the centre parts it’s not recommended to walk around anyway.

But okay, let’s start where I finished my last report. A week before I finished at the rainforest project, two new students from the Netherlands arrived, which made my very happy because one of them brought my new phone (which I ordered in the NLs to safe a lot of money). So from that day on I could make really nice photo’s again (which was honestly the main reason to buy that phone). During my last weekend there, we went on a boat trip through one of the rivers here, watching wildlife from the water. That day my phone proved already that it was worth the investment. We saw a lot of birds, iguanas, some monkeys and even a sloth (If you do a tour without seeing at least one, it’s really bad luck). Although some birds were to far away to get a nice photo of them, I at least got some nice photo’s of some of them as well as some monkeys.

This boat trip also was a sort of starting my touristy time here. In the reserve and compound where we worked and lived we saw many frogs, spiders, butterflies, some birds and eventually some snakes (the last night there we found a small cute coffee snake on the path to the accomodation that liked to go around my wrist like a bracelet), so seeing some monkeys, iguanas and waterbirds was something new for me here.

My first destination while travelling by myself was the less touristic little town of Cahuita, which is especially known for snorkeling. The day I arrived there I found out that i could just get into the water from my hostel and see nice fish, although the reef and coral life was not very brilliant. Next day I went snorkeling close to the national park shore. Go snorkeling there is only allowed with a guide and on a tour which of course means paying a lot of money. I didn’t find that, looking forward to see a more vivid reef and dito marine animals. Unfortunately the reef wasn’t really more colourful, although we did see some reef sharks, manta rays and lion fish so it was still nice. After the snorkeling we walked back through the national park with the guide and again saw some snakes, lizards, 3 sweatwater turtles and again a sloth (though far away and always hard to spot as they appear big termite bowls or knobs in the tree).

The next day I went back into the park by myself. In the beginning local guides told me to take a guide, otherwise I wouldn’t see much. Well, they were wrong. I first saw a family of racoons playing around like dogs. A little bit later I saw some families of capuchin monkeys, with one of them getting pretty close so I decided to step back in case he wanted to take my camera, which he didn’t do. A little bit later when I was halfway the trail at a small picknick area I wanted to take a snack. All of a sudden a capuchin monkey came running towards my bag. I tried to safe by bag with nuts from him stealing it, but the guy was smart enough to just go into my backpack and going to steal my bag of dried fruits. Although they are really small, they have sharp teeth and I didn’t want to fight with him so let him take the bag and run off into a tree (and actually I was also a bit shocked for a short moment by what he did). I was most worried about him eating the plastic of getting sick by eating to much fruits in one time but of course monkeys are smart enough to just rip open a bag and probably also know when to stop eating. Anyway I wasn’t waiting for him to finish the bag and throw it down from the trees, so continued walking for another ten minutes until I felt safe enough to sit down and have my own snack.

At the end of the trail I even saw a nosebear, which was really the first time in my life to see that in the wild; so it was a really interesting and educational walk that day, without needing a guide.

Next day I had to get up early to catch a boat taking me all the way from Limon to Tortuguero through the cannels and rivers near the Carribean see. Although we went really fast, it took more than 3,5 hours on the boat. Tortuguero is surrounded by cannels so the only way to get there is by boat (or airplane if you’re really rich and lazy). Tortuguero is about the only place on the Carribean coast where you can watch sea turtles come ashore to lay eggs and next to Puerto Viejo therefore the only real touristic place on the Carribean Coast. I think I was the only tourist there NOT going to see the turtles. The tour is $35 and I’ll be working with sea turtles for a whole month soon. I did book a early morning canoe tour to get around throught to canals; although the wildlife is about the same as at the Pacuare river, by canoe we could even get much closer to the animals without chasing them away. Now I could picture all those herons and cormorants from really close and even see a young alligator waiting for one of us putting his hand in the water. the most impressed I was though by a strange bird, which could turn it’s wings inside out while drying them in the wind, making it look like a real Buddhist bird.(see the photo to see what I mean).

Later that morning I made a hike in the tortuguero national park while I saw a lot of cute little lizards (mainly the whiptail lizards) and also a lot of spider monkeys. They are also funny to look at and don’t get so easily aggressive to humans).

The next most special thing to do in Tortuguero is walking up a vulcanic hill. To get there I had to take another boat (it started to look a bit like Venice, taking boats to get anywhere). Getting to the top of the hill meant going up about 500 stairs but it was really nice to have a view on the canals and the coastline after having been there for more than a day.

After that full day of watching nature, today I made it back to San Jose as I wrote above, but only to get an early morning bus to Monteverde tomorrow. That is part of the cloud forest of Costa Rica, which means it’s higher up in the mountains, so hopefully it’s cooler there. For sure there’s even more propability to get rain there, so let’s see what that means in real life. I’ll let you know next time.

Let’s end with the same request as last time. I also like to know about all of your lifes, so if you have time, make me happy and write something by whatsapp, email or just replying on this blog.