Estero Azul

Switched up the pace today and did a river tour of the Sierpe river. The Sierpe Terraba Wetland Reserve is the largest mangrove in Costa Rica and second largest in all of Latin America. Due to a road closure from the rains we had to go an alternate route which took us ~2 hours.

The river tour took us out on a decently speedy pontoon. The weather was gorgeous, best yet of the trip blue skies and not a drop of rain. As long as we were moving the breeze provided great temperature control with the hot sun. The mangroves making up a good portion of the area we were in produce massive amounts of oxygen. Mangroves are the world's only saltwater tree and sink down 5 times more CO2 than an average terrestrial tree. Immediately we found a crocodile male and female and the male was trying to get the females attention, unsuccessfully. He had his mouth wide open and was making a low grumbling sound, called bellowing a tactic to attract females. Found quite a few kingfishers, a tiger heron, turtles, more crocodiles, various other birds, a sloth way up, and some bats hanging below a bridge and on a palm tree, purple gallinule, and few green heron including a nesting one and a cute baby. The finds of the day was anteater and a boa constrictor! The anteater and boa seemed to like hanging high on the bamboo. Was surprised at the speediness of the anteater. Funnily, they are picky with their food. When they go after termites the target the white ones since they are less bitter.

We had our closest monkey encounter yet, so close that a few times we thought the capuchins were going to jump into the boat. They were extremely playful today. We watched them for a long while wrestling on the ground or dangling and wrestling, running and jumping, and shaking branches at us (see video below). We even saw them dip their tail or arm into the water quickly and drink it off their body, this tactic is to avoid getting snagged by a crocodile.

The rest of the day was spend with a quick property walk, we found some posing birds and I played with a hermit crab in a not so nice shell. We then spent time jamming a lot of items into our baggage to drop off for transport, to be as light as possible for what will probably be a pretty challenging 12 mile (20km) hike tomorrow. We are wearing all long sleeves to protect from the foliage and animals / the sun. When the sun comes out, it’s sticky and hot. We also will be doing some river crossings so we picked up some dry bags for our camera gear. We got dinner in town and were the only people there, odd but food was satisfying and I got to practice my Spanish. To round off the night, we had a crab visitor in our hotel room.

Tomorrow let’s see if I can update, we will be in a pretty remote place and I assume dang exhausted.Read more