Tortuguero Day 2 and the Jaguar in my Bed

We were awoken at ...

Wait, let me start that again.

I was awoken at 4:30am to the most frightening sound I'd ever heard. An intensely loud, guttural growling was coming from somewhere outside our flimsy mesh-windowed cabina. At first, coming out of a deep, tropically-induced sleep, I thought someone was having a fight with a huge boar (or a rodent of unusual size). Then, I realised there was a Jaguar stalking through the hotel grounds, picking off the guests one by one, stripping Adam of his flesh right beside me ...

Oh. Right. I forgot. Howler monkeys.

My first introduction to the calling howler monkeys was a bit dunderheaded, I'll admit, but it can't have been worse than Adam, whom I shook and said "can you hear that?". It was a stupid question - no one in a kilometre radius could have managed to not hear it, but Adam gave me a "hear what?".

There was a band of trees connecting the rainforest on one side of the hotel grounds to the rainforest on the other side. While crossing the night before, the troupe had decided to stop there and sleep for the night. The band of trees was precisely behind our room.

Needless to say, we were up nice and early for our 5:30am departure to the canals, for our early early morning boat tour. Costa Rica is famous for its bird biodiversity especially, and it was definitely the right time to see them. And for us, it meant not being roasted in the noon sun and eaten for lunch by the caiman.

Gregory, el Capitan, navigating

the canals.

Our tour group.

Every few metres, another new species of bird would fly overhead or be perched on a nearby branch. At this time more than ever, Adam and I were ruing the day we forgot to buy binoculars, and ruing even more the day we decided we needed to eat more than buy a digital SLR.

A family of microbats. This species

commonly sleeps on trees overhanging

water, in groups of up to 15.

We were quickly "ticking" off many of the species we'd been expecting to miss out on in our short stay, including all three of Tortuguero's toucans. Please note: We're not actually keeping a list. That would be crossing over into previously unexplored territory of obsession.

A toucan. I swear.

Mario told us that when you find three toucans, you get a six-pack. It took me a while to figure out why everyone was groan-laughing (that special kind reserved for puns).

The previous night we had spotted a few things that were impossible to take photos of. One was a tree-full of fireflies displaying their flashing green lights in search of mates. The other was the orange eye-shine of a caiman in the dock. At this point, I had no idea what one looked like in comparison to a crocodile or what size I could be expecting. I only knew it had eyes. So, we were very excited to spot one in the daylight, and Gregory did his utmost to get the caiman to hang around for us.

Adam faces off with the caiman.

In fact, he did such a good job (splashing around in the water to get his attention) that the caiman decided to come all the way up to the boat and nose-bump it. Caimans grow to a maximum of 2.5m, but females are always much smaller. Unlike the Australian crocodiles, the Caiman is a member of the alligator family. They have a hugely varying diet as they grow, starting with insects, crustaceans and gastropods and moving onto fish and even small mammals as they get larger.

Ma! There's another 'gator in the house!

The caiman nose-fives the boat.

Basilisk lizards are common in the Tortuguero national park, but it was not often that we were treated to a displaying male. Easily the most impressive is the Emerald Basilisk (Basiliscus plumifrons), and we just happened to slide on by a male hanging over the water with all his junk out.

Dee was recently bitten by a

basilisk lizard, and Dad, worried

that it might have some goanna-like

venom, googled "Basilisk venom". He

freaked out when he got millions of

results and found that the only cure

was phoenix tears.

The Northern Jacana is an polyandrous

bird that uses its long, thin toes to walk

over water plants without falling in. Since

Central America seems to have Jesus on the

brain, this bird is also called the "Jesus-bird."

We were treated to many more bird sightings before we stumbled across the motherload. Gregory "parked" the boat near a little bank of tree roots, and we sat here for ten minutes and watched a troupe of White-faced Capuchins crossing the trees right in front of the boat. Interestingly, once one monkey finds a path, most of the subsequent monkeys follow the exact same one - so we were able to anticipate the exact place each monkey would appear.

The White-faced terrestrial monkey differs greatly

from the White-faced capuchin. (Expression:
Srsly I just saws monkeyz.)

This is my favourite one. White-faced capuchins

are very intelligent and use both tools and medicine.

They've apparently been trained to assist paraplegics.

This one sat there looking right at use for a minute

or so.

That concluded our foray into the canals of Tortuguero. The afternoon was taken up with a walk around the hotel gardens (which were less like gardens than a forest). Mario told us about all sorts of plants, including a fruit which Ticas once used for make-up, and a hollow tree that grows ridiculously fast and sounds like a drum. We found a two-toed sloth in a tree behind our room, and also a male and female pair of supermassive grasshoppers.

The two-toed sloth is far less common than the

three-toed sloth - about a ratio of 1:4, according

to our guide.

These guys were dark with very cool

orange antennae.

At night fall, we had dinner and then it was time to GO SEE THE TURTLES!!!!!!!!!! Our tour won the "turtle raffle", which meant we got to go in the early batch (8pm), whereas the others would have to wait until 10pm.

The view from the beach at sunset. The turtles

were on the same beach - just much further down.

Adam:

We hopped on the rocket boat and flew down the river at breakneck speed. Soon we arrived at the village and met our guide Pollo (note: he was not a chicken). Pollo led us to the beach and explained the turtle spotter program. This program, a recent development, had spotters roaming the beach in order to guide the tour groups to turtles once they had settled. We waited patiently on the beach while the spotters did their thing. After a short wait the spotters took us to the turtles. The spotters had found two green sea turtles (great whopping beasts of the sea) that had settled within two metres of each other and made their nests. For perspective each turtle was about the size of a quad-bike (not quite as tall though). When we arrived the turtles had just started to lay, and went on pushing out out eggs for about 15 minutes. Apparently of all the eggs laid (around 100) only one or two will survive to adulthood, thankfully the beach is visited by thousands of turtles and a good number will make it through. After laying, the turtles began to seal the egg chamber. This involved patting the area down with their back flippers (to get down) until they were satisfied that the chamber was secure. Once this stage was complete the real fun began...

Like this but double!

Using their powerful turtle limbs our plucky pair started camouflaging their nests. The turtles thrust great amounts of sand backwards over their nests, with ease akin to how people would splash water. Caitlin and I, standing directly behind the turtles, got to enjoy the spray of turtle-sand right in our faces (we felt privileged). After many successful sand attacks the turtles were satisfied with their handiwork and they set their sites back on the ocean. At this point Caitlin and I decided to hold a friendly wager with a game of giant sea turtle racing (no we didn't ride them). Once the turtles had set off from their nests we walked behind with silent encouragement. The turtles adopted a burst and rest strategy, making great gains followed by lengthy rests. It was painstaking but fascinating, and as the water grew nearer the heat was on. It was a pitched battle but in the end Caitlin's titanic terrific turtle took the title. From the waterline we saw another turtle making its way in to make it's nest (it was like a boulder emerging from the sea) for the turtles the night had only just begun, for us though it was time to head back. Pollo led us back through the village to the rocket boat for a leisurely ride back to the resort, what a night!