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| Tortuguero |
Waking up early in the morning on
Valentine's Day our host kindly greeted us with an early breakfast
before we were picked up by our bus to our next destination. Having
only organised this section of our trip two days ago, after seeing a
leaflet on the counter of our accommodation, we were full of
apprehension and excitement for the real start of our Costa Rican
adventure. After several hours we stopped for breakfast (our lunch)
at a stop which brought in people from all directions. Pura Vida was
the greeting of the day and we were to find out that this is the
national greeting in Costa Rica, meaning Pure Life. After everybody
was fed we were all sorted onto different coaches depending on our
next destination. After about another hour, change to a boat, another
stop and then another boat, we finally arrived at our destination
Tortuguero.
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| The Recycling Plant |
The awesome little one street town
contains no cars (you can only come here by boat) and mainly contains
eating places and accommodation except for a recycling plant which
takes recyclables, especially plastics, and creates useable items out
of them such as furniture. We were taken to the tourist office
running our tour and given a rundown of what was going to happen for
the couple of days we were here. A sign on their desk said “
Cuanto
mas amamos el mundo, mas hermoso nos parece”, which roughly
translates to “The more we love the world, the more beautiful it
seems to us.” I am certainly loving Costa Rica and it is getting
more beautiful every day :-)
Tortuguero means land of turtles and is
a turtle breeding site, but it was the wrong time of year for
observing breeding. It is also a rainforest and despite several years
of drought, was in catch up mode the next day. We got up bright and
early for our canoe trip on the river and with four other people and
a guide we explored the Tortuguero River using arm power. We had some
dry moments and many wet moments as we traversed a totally clean and
crisp river system surrounded by lovely lush jungle and saw a large
range of wildlife including numerous birds (h
erons,
ibis, hummingbirds etc), monkeys, crocodiles and turtles.
The river trip was followed by a hike
in the jungle. We took up the offer of the included knee high rubber
wellies and large waterproof coats as we began trekking looking for
wildlife. This was in contrast to the fairly stubborn Polish couple
who hit the jungle in shorts and sandals, despite numerous requests
from our guide for them to dress more appropriately. We were
comfortable in our decision as we trudged along paths with large,
deep, muddy puddles and withstood numerous showers. Our wildlife
experience included h
owler & white faced
Capucin monkeys, more birds, lizards and Costa Rica's national bird
the clay coloured robin. Thanks to our keen eyed guide we even came
across the elusive sloth, which to us just looked like a termite
mound. Though considering that sloths live their whole lives in the
one tree and only come down once every ten days to do their business
at the base of the same tree, s/he and the guide probably see each
other every day. The only time we came across rubbish was plastic on
the beach, but the guide explained this was not the town's rubbish
but gets washed in from the oceans. Another reminder how we need to
stop plastic ASAP!
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| Glorious Nature |
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| The brown mound is a sloth |
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| When we reached the beach the weather took a turn for the worse |
We spent a very wet night
enjoying dinner at our very cheap resort and the next morning
enjoying its facilities including swimming in the pool in the rain.
By lunch time it was back on the boat to continue on to the next leg
of our eco adventure.
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The meal area of our wonderful accommodation
located in the middle of the rainforest |
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| and wide verandahs |
