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Published: March 3rd 2007
We had bought a two bus-one boat combo ticket in the capital to take us into the depths of Costa Rica’s Caribbean jungle: A the end of our first bus ride we arrived at the tour company office to discover that our second bus to the river had already left? So the manager squeezed us and our luggage into the back of a typical white van on top of a huge fridge freezer to make the bumpy journey through the banana plantations to the river. On route a car traveling in the opposite direction stopped to advise our driver of potential muggers hiding out on route. Luckily our driver had a gun which he got ready on his lap and the other local lady passenger in the front seat got out her pepper spray - fortunately neither was needed and we arrived safely at the river dock where the other bus passengers and their luggage were waiting in a motorized wooden longboat. Kev and I joined them, as did the huge fridge freezer!
We obviously could understand the boat captain’s Spanish but there was a very annoying American Peace Corps girl on the boat who took it upon herself to
Caimens
Caimans are like mini crocodiles this one was about 3 feet longtranslate everything into English for the rest of the travelers, even though no-one had asked her to! We were glad to be off the boat and rid of her voice as she spent the rest of the boat-ride talking about herself loudly to her friends.
We slipped into dock at Tortuguero village as night fell, A kind young man showed us to the cabanas that we wanted to stay at and also said he was a guide if we were interested in a tour. He was a nice guy so we arranged a tour with him for early the next morning. There were just four of us in our wooden paddle canoe boat - no motors for us, they scare the animals away.
We had a tranquil tour with our guide doing all the physical paddling work whilst also pointing out animals and birds for us to see. The river was lined by lush jungle and took many twists and turns on route. We saw various birds, both high up in the trees and walking delicately across lily-like plants on the river surface. We watched families of cappuccino, spider and howler monkeys climb and jump through the trees,
The Jungle
We were in a small canoe style boat and so could navigate smaller areas of the jungle to look for more animals! as much interested in us as we were in them! Our guide also found caimans for us hiding under the bushes.
Tortuguero village with its one main street - a sandy footpath - was not a particularly happening place, more of a base for trips. As we had done our jungle river trip and visited the beach, we only stayed until the following morning when we woke at 7am, the time our boat was due to depart! We stuffed our bags and ran like mad men all the way to the dock, fearing the worst, but luckily the boat departure times were true ‘tico’ times and we ended up waiting for nearly another hour before we left.
The boat trip back to the city was our most exciting for animal spotting; we saw loads of crocodiles, various troops of monkeys, a river turtle (like the ones we looked after at the Rainsong Sanctuary) and just before docking, a sloth was spied high up at the top of a tree.
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Josecito
non-member comment
good Golly.
Cripes. Quite a retrospective journal we got going now eh? Ha. lookers nice than Wellington, got to say... See you sometime...Joe