Tortuguero jungle journey

---

Day 198: Journey into the Jungle

Having been prewarned about the rather limited supply of cashpoints on the Caribbean coast, I thought I'd be on the safe side and get a bit more cash out before heading east. The fact that streets don't have names in Costa Rica and that all navigation needs to be done using local landmarks proved to be a bit of a problem as a newcomer (with no knowledge of local landmarks), as I head into town in search of a bank. I left the hostel at half-seven, trying to remember where I was going so that I could find my way back. One hour and two banks later and I couldn't find anywhere that would take my card, although miraculously I managed to find the hostel again (address: 250 metres east of the north-east corner of the Supreme Courts of Justice). Having not packed, and still with insufficient funds and the bus leaving in half-an-hour, I realised that I would be getting a later bus and travelling through the hottest part of the day. I braved town again, and after asking around and trying two more cashpoints without success, I finally found an HSBC right in the centre of the shopping district.

Back at base, I packed up my things, called a taxi and was very soon on my way to the bus terminal to catch the first of two buses to Pavona, where all being well, there would be a boat to take me to Tortuguero National Park.

The first bus journey took the predicted two hours and passed without any problems. I arrived in the small town of Cariari where I was due to change bus. Despite being tiny, one street Cariari did in fact have two bus terminals, and as luck wouldn't have it, I needed to get to the other one. Trekking through town in the sweltering heat, laden with belongings (why did I buy all those books?), I arrived ten minutes too late for the bus to Pavona, and subsequently had a two and a half hour wait, sitting on a bench outside the station, surrounded by school children, young mum's with babies (that started to look quite sickly as temperatures rose) and vendors selling plastic inflatables, fake flowers and bags of flavoured ice.

Whilst waiting, by enormous coincidence, I met a guy from Bariloche who worked at the university there (didn't know they had one), teaching biology. He was on a three month research programme at Tortuguero, tagging and monitoring turtles and would be on the same bus. When the bus finally arrived at three and it was standing room only, this at least gave me someone to talk to and distract me from the overwhelming heat as we made our way across the banana plantations to Pavona. It was all going so well (albeit slowly), when the bus shuddered to a halt forty-five minutes later. After a few unsuccessful attempts to start the motor again, it was soon clear that we were going nowhere and everyone piled off the bus whilst a mechanic who happened to be travelling on the bus, did his best to put fix the engine as petrol leaked in a steady stream onto the road. He had some success, and we were soon on our way again, albeit temporarily, since five minutes later, we stopped again, and this time no amount of tinkering was going to get us moving. Standing around on a gravel road in the middle of a banana plantation, we waited for another bus, which thankfully showed up half an hour later.

Reaching Pavona four hours later than I had intended, the bus stopped at the boat launch to find that there hadn't been enough water for the boat to make it that far up the river! Since the ground was dry, and to prevent us from having to walk, the bus driver took the cross country route using a dirt track to reach the wharf across some fields a little further down the river. Here, I finally boarded the last boat of the day, heading towards the coast and down the waterways to Tortuguero National Park where I arrived just after dark. The entire journey had somehow taken over eight hours (predicted time four hours).

I'd made the mistake of starting to talk to a guy on the boat who turned out to be a 'guide'. He seemed alright so I booked a tour with him for the following day, travelling around the waterways of the park in a canoe, looking at wildlife. Unfortunately, the tour booking didn't suffice, and he insisted on joining me on my hunt for accomodation, taking me to some really dire places and in the opposite direction of the area that I wanted to stay in (locals tend to get commission for showing up at hostels with backpackers). Fortunately I got my way in the end and checked into my first choice budget hostel, where I had a room to myself complete with bathroom and towels folded into swans. After getting some food, refusing many a kind offer of some marijuana, and smothering myself in ample mosquito repellant, I went back to the hostel and settled down to get some sleep.


Day 199: Burning on the beach and turtle tours

Waking to the sound of birds squawking in the trees outside my room, I left my room early, past the giant catepillar and humungous toad sitting on the balcony outside my room and head down to the beach. Although not typically beautiful, there was noone else on the dark sandy beach, and lined by coconut palms, I thought it'd be a nice place to chill out and read for a while. Despite it being quite early, I lasted all of about fifteen minutes. It was absolutely scorching hot, and with the sand burning my feet and everything else just roasting in the sun, I soon made a hasty retreat back to a local cafe for cake and coke and the relative cool of my balcony.

My tour guide Roberto showed up on time, but wasn't keen to go for a canal trip because apparently it was 'too hot', and could I wait an hour. I'm not sure what he was playing at, or what the real reason was, but I was more than slightly annoyed when one of his friends showed up too to convince me that I should wait as suggested. Since it's apparently always very hot in the early afternoon, I don't know why he arranged to do the tour in the first place. Anyway, I cancelled the trip.

I think I'm going to be leaving tomorrow, but still wanting to look around the national park, I found another guide, who seems a bit more reliable. He's offered to take me around the canals at half-five in the morning before I get a boat out of the town. So it looks like I'm in for an early start! Having wandered round town for a bit, which didn't take too long, since the main 'road' is less than a kilometre long, devoid of any vehicles, and barely a metre wide for the mostpart, and spent some time chatting to the locals, who by-and-large are a very friendly and informative bunch, I walked out of town to the Conservation group where Mario, the Argentinian guy from Bariloche, worked. I had said I'd stop by for dinner, but a bit on the early side, he wasn't there, and instead I got chatting to some of the other people working there, had a look round the site and its small museum, and watched a video about the turtles of Tortuguero.

Inspired by my newfound knowledge of turtles, I arranged a 'turtle trip, and with three others, left at ten o'clock to go in search of them on the beach (out of bounds without a guide after dark to protect the turtles). Although it was out of season, and so sightings weren't guaranteed, we were in luck, and found out that there was a green turtle nesting about a kilometre up the beach from town. After much trudging through sand, we found her, digging a hole to lay her eggs in near some trees. The conservation group were there too, and we watched for a while in the moonlight (no torches allowed) whilst she laid her eggs (about a hundred of them), before returning to the sea an hour and a half later.

After our successful turtle trip, I went with the group of two french guys, american girl and our two turtle guides for a drink in Tortuguero's only 'club', a wooden buiding on stilts perched on the river bank. It was an interesting bar, possibly not the kind of place I'd have wanted to go on my own though, and after a beer, I walked back to my hostel with one of the guides, in the knowledge that I'd have to get up again less than four hours later.


Day 200: Boats, boats and buses

Up at the crack of dawn, I was on board a canoe by half-past five this morning. Fortunately, this does indeed turn out to be a great time for viewing animals, although despite being on the water, it was still bloody hot! As we paddled slowly down the waterways of Tortuguero, I saw a wide assortment of birds, mammals and reptiles, from toucans and storks, to monkeys, caiman and otters. I also got to see a Jesus Christ lizard sprint across the water in front of us (no, that's not a profanity, it is actually called that). As a first, I actually got to see some monkeys without one of them trying to attack me. I have not-so-fond memories of members of the ape family in other countries, including a monkey in Bali that tried to bite me on the back, and a gibbon in Tanzania that leapt onto my head and got tangled up in my hair. Although monkey's can swim, I think it might be too much effort for them just to attack me, so going by boat was probably a good idea!

Back in Tortuguero and slightly sunburnt by half-past eight, I had a bit of free time to get some breakfast and pack up my things, before getting back to the jetty, ready to get the boat to Moin, a small town eighty-five kilometres down the coast. Being quite a way, the journey took a happy four hours before myself and four random french people finally reached dry land. The journey was interesting enough though, as well as the dense foliage all around, we got to see various other wildlife, including wild horses that seem to have evolved with super long legs for wading across rivers, and an alligator sleeping on a log.

The boat was too noisy for me to get any sleep, and so when I arrived in Moin in the early afternoon, I was by all accounts, too tired and grumpy to deal with the hoardes of taxi drivers trying to convince me that I needed to get in their car to get a lift to Puerto Limon ten kilometres away. The frenchies all scarpered to their hire car waiting for them in the parking lot, and rather than take one of the over-pushy taxi drivers up on their offer (the prices of which started to plummet as I walked away), I escaped the hassle, and went to sit at the 'bus stop', a giant rock under a tree, and wait for the local transport. Although a bit apprehensive about the reliability of the 'bus stop', I was pleased when half-an-hour later, a bus turned up to take me to Puerto Limon. The journey took slightly longer than anticipated, as the bus picked up all and sundry along the way, but I got there eventually, and the driver even pointed me in the right direction of the terminal for my onward transport to Cahuita down the coast. Walking the streets of Puerto Limon didn't cause me any problems, despite it's notoriety (Puerto Limon, an industrial port, has a very unsavoury reputation) and just a few blocks away, I found the bus office without too much difficulty, where I had a forty minute wait for the next bus making the hour-long trip to Cahuita.

---