Let's Just Cut to the Good Stuff and Tortuguero, Day 1

Apologies in advance: My zoom sucks. We're doing our best.

Blah blah blah, Mexico, blah blah, didn't leave the airport, blah blah, Mexico is evil.

As far into Mexico as we dared travel after

the visitor information centre gave us a map

and said "everything's closed".

Blah blah flight. Arrived in San Jose. Adam said to the customs guy in Spanish "Do I speak English?" Caitlin laughed a lot.

Blah blah. Hotel room got upgraded to executive suite for free. Didn't know until we got inside. Blah blah. Bath robes.

Adam eating his warm cookie at check-in. It

was actually warm. They warm up their cookies.

For check-in.

The 13th, of course, was Adam's birthday. We spent it chilling out at the hotel after an exhausting succession of flights, early starts and busy, busy days. The language has been a bit of an amusement to get used to; especially as we spent the whole of Mexico trying to figure out how to order vegetarian food. When we finally did it, we realised our flight was boarding and had to eat our dinner covertly out of a bag on the plane.

I totally aced the taxi and managed to ask for a receipt as well, so we were feeling a lot better about everything by Adam's birthday (however, people at the hotel mostly speak English anyway). Then, we had a 5:40am bus to catch to Tortuguero National Park.

View over the roof of the hotel. It was supposed

to look nice. I think the computer makes photos

ugly.

Our tour guide was a hilariously enthusiastic local called Mario, and he was very knowledgeable on all things nature and spoke very good English. After picking up two Dutch guys, we started the drive to Tortuguero National Park (the area of turtles). Driving north from San Jose, we crossed the mountains and the Great Divide that splits the water drainage of the country and the seasons. The south side experiences the wet and dry seasons. The north experiences the wet and wetter seasons.

At one point, the driver madly pulled off the highway and screeched to a halt. Mario then calmly pointed out the three-toed sloth scratching itself in a tree. How either of them spotted it from a distance going that fast, I have no idea. I swear I took a photo but it seems to have gone missing.

We stopped for breakfast (desayuno) somewhere that I completely can't remember. The local dish for breakfast, lunch and dinner is rice and beans (gallo pinto if it comes mixed, casado if not). The only difference is, for desayuno you get an amazing assortment of fresh fruits that taste better than anywhere else, and I haven't yet had the same fresh fruit juice twice. Most of the time I don't even know which fruit I'm drinking.

We saw our first Costa Rican insects (and arachnids) at the butterfly house at the restaurant. There was an amazing array of butterfly species at all stages of their lifecycles. There were some big blue ones that looked like the Ulysses from Australia but also lots of other kinds we'd never seen before, caterpillars, cocoons and all!

Butterflies emerging from their cocoons

and drying their wings.

The biggest harvestman I've ever seen! It

was the size of the palm of my hand - bigger,

if it stretched its legs out. There was another

one running around on the same leaf.

After breakfast, we turned off the highway and ended up on a very rough, rocky road. Mario pointed out the pineapple plantations to us, and explained the history of the cultivation of the pineapple, and also how to choose the best ones from the shop (go for the hard, green ones, folks!). Not long after, we found ourselves driving through extensive banana plantations. The banana industry in this part of Costa Rica is huge, but they're worried that the economic situation in the US will put a dent in their exports for years to come.

A banana plantation. The blue bags are not

to protect the bananas from getting et, but

to increase their rate of growth.

Getting the bananas to the nearby open-air

packing factory is an interesting process. In

lots of about twenty, they are tied to cabling

stretching the entirety of the plantations, which

then conveys along like big blue hovering ducklings.

When they get to a road, they go straight across at eye

level, so you have to wait at the banana crossings

until they've passed.

For environmental reasons, there are no roads into the national park, so we pulled in at the dock and transferred to the boat. From this point on, it was wildlife city as we got our first taste of the biodiversity in this gem of a Central American country.

The boat we took, and Mario standing

with el Capitan, Gregory (a phenomenal

wildlife spotter, even whilst driving a boat).

We'd barely moved from the dock when we

were privy to a whole flock of Roseate spoonbills.

These birds have a widened, spoon-like end to

the bill made for catching shrimp and other

water invertebrates, giving them their pink

colouration.

One that Gregory spotted from the speeding

boat. A Howler monkey mid-nom on a leaf.

Nephila clavipes, the Golden orb-weaver. I went

nuts over this one and had the English guys we picked

up at the dock laughing at me until I realised there were

another two right next to it, and another twenty right

next to those ...

My Nephila hyperactivity occurred when we pulled up at the ranger station to buy tickets for tomorrow's rainforest tours. From there, we walked into the village. Since Tortuguero has been a national park since the 1970's, the only human residents (apart from the hotels) are in the village that existed before the change. This village originally subsisted on sea turtle hunting, but since then has made a very beautiful and inspiring story of itself that I will tell you tomorrow, when we go visit the nesting sea turtles of Tortuguero (the largest nesting site in the northern hemisphere). Consequently, you might be interested to know that Costa Rica is one of the greenest countries in the world, ranking first in the "Happy Planet Index". Go Ticos!

We arrived at the gorgeous hotel grounds and found our room to be largely made of mesh, with towels folded to look like turtles. Then it was a quick walk on the beach before dinner (cena) in an open-air restaurant, where we got our itinerary off Mario for the next few days.

That's the Caribbean you're looking at. The sand here

is black and extra clingy.

A ghost crab. My camera has the unfortunate habit

of being unable to use macro if you're zoomed more

than a millimetre, so I hope you fully appreciate how

difficult this shot was, considering how skittish crabs

are.

Aside from the canal and garden tours the next day, there were several optional tours such as a zipline canopy fly tour. We chose the sea turtle nesting tour for the following night, and the night walk around the hotel grounds with Mario's expert eyes on our side.

Adam faces off with a male basilisk, also

called "Jesus Christ lizards" due to

their ability to run across water. He was

seriously afraid it was going to claw his eyes out.

A cricket hanging about, doin' its thang.

Even the hotel grounds were alive with wildlife (though less inverts than I was hoping for!). It got to the point where it was "Oh, another basilisk". We spotted the eyeshine of a caiman in the water, and turned off our torches for a real firefly light spectacular. Mario identified a group of monkeys in the trees behind our rooms to be spider monkeys, but by 4:30am there were no doubts that they were Howlers. I woke up thinking someone was fighting a boar, then I thought there was a Jaguar in my room, then it clicked ...

The Garden orb-weavers are large an impressive. I found

this lady weaving/fixing her web for the night. She gave me

a quick "gracias" for the insects landing in it because

of my torch beam.

Rana sp? Can a frog person help?

And I guess this is a Litoria sp.

This chica was a lot more orange when I took

this, I swear.

One of the highlights of the walk was when I walked past a tree to find a baby bird sitting in front of me. I called Adam and Mario, and at first he was arguing that it was an adult until he saw the fluffy feathers, at which point he nearly wet his pants with excitement. When you get a guide of 24 years excited about something, you know it must be uncommon!

If Mario is to be believed, this is a young

Rufous-tailed hummingbird, which is another

great catch!

I also spotted a lizard in a bush which I thought was an emerald basilisk until I realised the crest was upside down (my way of saying he has a saggy chin bit - ie dewlap). We had seen a Green iguana from a distance that morning, but this was the first encounter! Green iguanas grow to quite an impressive size, so this one was only young and Mario felt quite happy to yoink it out of its comfy bush to let some annoying tourists hold it. Yay :)

Adam being all brave.

He was being a wigglepot so I had to let him

snuggle into my hand, which made for a bad

photo. Still, iguana!

To top off the night, we got back to our room to find a mudcrab nestled in our pile of floor clothes. Though hilarious, it was a merciful reminder that we should maybe not leave things on the floor, as wandering spiders are Costa Rica's answer to huntsmen, and if they bite, apparently you'll be begging the hospital staff to amputate the limb out of pain. Or you'll be dead. Sort of a toss-up. I've remembered to tap out my boots ever since.

Floor clothes crab!

This is floor clothes crab up close. He popped

in to say "Hola amigos! Aren't you glad I'm not

a wandering spider? You should probably

remember that next time you floor clothes."

And then we made him say adios and scuttle out

the door.

That's all for now, chicos! I'll be getting day two up as soon as I can, consisting of the canal tour (toucans and caiman a plenty!) and a detailed description of the sea turtles nesting, maybe with diagrams! (No cameras allowed! A bittersweet rule!) Also meet our first two-toed sloth on Tortuguero, episode two.

Blagging out!