Río Tortuguero

We left the 'big city' to seek out some nature and have come to the low laying wet lands which contains huge biodiversity thanks to the many types of habitat that can be found here. The park has rainforests, mangrove forests, swamps, beaches, and lagoons all located in a tropical climate which receives up to 6,400 mm of rain a year, about 10 times more than London or Paris. And we're here during the rainy season, so it is very humid.

The park, despite being one of the most popular stops in a Costa Rica tour, is actually quite remote, only accessible by boat or small aircraft. The boat ride is about an hour down small twisty rivers right through the heart of the jungle. Sloths, Howler Monkeys, Kingfishers, Spider Monkeys, Iguanas and Basilisk Lizards lined the banks ready to greet us to our jungle home for the next 3 nights. On arrival and after a quick buffet lunch we headed out for a nature walk in the trails the hotel with a guide explaining the history of the area and bio diversity of the region. We saw some familiar trees, the straggler figs, vines and a lot more epiphytes we saw in the Australian Rainforests. We also were lucky enough to see an Armadillo, although he didn't stick around for a photo op.

The next day, and following a very loud night, we went out in a boat to explore the rivers and canals and do some more wildlife spotting, Birds and Crocs were on the agenda today. We found some babies of a very elusive bird (we forgot its name but it was blue) as well as another that had speared itself a fish, we stayed long enough to watch it try to smash the fish to death, drop it, re-catch it, then swallow it down in one, quite impressive. When we got back to our hotel the monkeys had taken over and were in a rampage looking for food, we even spotted a mother carrying a baby, with a few males making sure nobody got to close.

That evening we set out after dark to the beach with some park rangers to observe some turtles laying their eggs. Tortugueo is primarily protected as it is one of the largest breeding grounds for the Green Turtle. The beach is only accessible during the day and is protected at night when the turtles nest. Each mature turtle lays between 80 and 100 in a sitting and during the nesting season they may make between 6 and 10 best, so maybe up to 1000 eggs in 3 months. They won't usually reach maturity untilythey are 25 years old and will nest once every 3 or 4 years. Our group was lucky enough to have a turtle nesting near by and once she was comfortable and had assumed the position the rangers allowed us close enough to see the eggs popping out and watch her cover them over. One of nature's wonders..

On our last full day, we've done the hike up the only hill there is in the park. An easy hike were we admired the view of the park and found a very small red frog. In the afternoon we set on our own to the hotel's walking trail to try to observe a tucan, the only one left on the list of animalsto see! We managed to track two down to take a picture, mission accomplished!Read more