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Published: March 26th 2010
Hi again,
Just like it was 15 years ago, we discover again, that in order to be able to travel in this country we have to wake up very early to catch busses leaving San Jose.
So that's what we do again (like we did for Poas) - early wake up - we are heading today to
Tortuguero National Park, one of the most famous parks of Costa Rica. This time, aswe know we are going for a few days, we pack one of our big bags with the things we would need in the coming days, and leave 2 big bags in the hostel in San Jose. Now, lighter than ever, we are ready to go.
And "to go" means we first need to get to "Terminal Caribenyo" to take the bus to
Cariari. After only 2.5 hours we arrive there. Then, like in San Jose, we need to walk to a different terminal were we board another bus that takes us (2 hours on a gravel road), to
Pavona. Though it is a bumpy ride, it is very beautiful. Most of the time we are surrounded by green vegetation either of the tropical jungle around us
or with the huge banana plantations that cover the area. This is where much of Costa Rica bananas are grown for export (Chiquita brand, is very famous in Europe).
In Pavona, which is not more than 2 houses and a coffee shop, we finally board our last transportation for the day - a “public” motor boat. The boat travels in sweet-water canals for about an hour and a half before it reaches our destination - the village of
Tortuguero, which is right at the entrance to the park.
It was a bit harder than we expected to find a place to stay in the village, although we are out of season. We passed through 4 or 5 hostels - but all were full. Eventually we found a very nice place -
Cabinas Tortuguero for a very good price. Later we also learned that the couple running this place are very very nice and helpful - so all in all it was probably the best hostel we had until now.
After settling down we explored the small village looking for lunch. One restaurant was already closed, and so we sat in the other low cost restaurant in the
village “center” - an open area that has a public phone in its center, a few cramped shops around it and by the water canal, the main pier for the arriving boats. We then had the national food of Costa Rica - fried chicken ('a la' KFC) with rice and papaya milkshake. At that point it stroke us and we realized why it is SO quiet here - there are no cars on this stretch of land... Actually all is transfered here by boats: villagers, visitors and groceries.
Then we wandered around in the village mainly intending to shop around for tours for the next morning.
Tortuguero, is a small and calm village, situated in a very unique location - on a narrow stretch of land extending in between the sweet water canals made by the slow running rivers in the region and the sea on the other side. This means that the village has water from both sides. While the canals and their surroundings are covered with jungles and a variety of flora and fauna, the sea shore is also a very important location - it is one of the biggest and most famous sea turtles nesting
Jesus Christ Lizard
The Famous Emerald Bazilisk that can run on water.habitat in the world. Actually, the turtles are the reason for the name of the village and National Park ("Tortuga" in Spanish means "Turtle").
The village is so small, that we manage to walk its main street, edge to edge, in the next 30 minutes, stopping at every souvenir or art shop to see all the variety offered for the tourists.
The boys were so tired after this walk, that all 3 of them (yes, yes - including Tal, the big boy), fell asleep early (you should agree with me that falling asleep at 5:30 pm is early!). Nitzan and I were not that tired, and so we spent some time in the hammock, then walked a bit more in the village to the non-touristic part of it, and were rewarded with seeing a beautiful owl, standing fairly close, on the roof of one of the houses. It was black and white with a yellow beak and seemed to be indifferent to the people standing around and staring at him. After a while, he became bored with the people looking at him, so he just flew away... Then, before going to bed, we treated ourselves in the bakery
of the village (also serving food, and was almost the only business still open at that time - only 9pm!)with a banana bread (Zafi - yours is better!), and some fruit shake.
What we learned from this evening, is that in Costa Rica - there is hardly night life... People wake up early, bus run early, but everything kind of stand still at around 6pm: shops closes, bus lines are not available after this time etc. Even restaurants serve only until 7 or 8 pm. It was something we already saw in San Jose, but thought it is only so in the big city, due to higher crime - so everything closes when it gets dark. But, here we were, in a tiny village, built mainly on tourism, and again - everything is closed by no later than 7 pm. For us, coming from Barcelona life style, where restaurants only open after 8:30 pm, it was hard to understand and accept.
The next morning, we woke up really early for our tour - at 5:00 or so. We walked shortly to the National Park entrance, paid our fees and
boarded the canoe. Ricardo Montoya our guide, accompanied with
a "co-rower", started rowing the canoe from the village and into the maze of canals inside the park.
There are no words to describe
this great canoe ride experience!!! it was owsome, it was great, it was both beautiful, interesting and relaxing. We saw many animals - Howler monkeys, White Faced Capuchin Monkeys, Blue Herons, Tiger Herons, "Jesus Christ" lizard (The walk on water Emerald Basilisk), just to name a few; we listened to the sounds of the jungle; we smelled the flowers of different trees; we learned about the uses of some of the trees and plants growing in the area and so much more. We also learned how hard it is to find the animals hiding and camouflaging themselves into the jungle - just as an example, when our guide saw an Iguana up on one of the trees, it took us more than 5 minutes and lots of explanations from him until we managed to see it ourselves. Luckily, he had very good eyes, and also a good networking with other guides that were sailing around with their canoes, that have shared with him their findings (and vice versa, obviously).
As it was early morning,
we enjoyed kind of both worlds, and saw both animals that are normally nocturnal and were still visible, and the durnal (day) animals that only started their "daily routine" - such as the monkeys (mostly Howlers and White-Faced Capuchines) having breakfast, or the lizards looking for a sunny spot to start warming themselves.
We were also very proud in ourselves as our guide spoke Spanish only, and even though some of the material is not the kind of everyday Spanish, we understood all of it!
I am attaching some photos that we took along the way - mainly of the animals we saw, but there are much more, so you
HAVE TO look at our full photos gallery, to really understand what richness of nature we were exposed to. Unfortunately, even the photos do not show the whole picture, as there many more birds and monkeys we saw, that are not on the photos - as they were slightly too far, or moved to fast for the camera to take a good photo (yes, even my great husband and photographer has limitations - he is human afterall).
The sad part of the trip was that it had
to end - The three and a half hours we have spent on the canoe, passed so quickly, that even Shachar who normally asks for food every 30 minutes or so, did not say anything about being hungry (though we did not even had breakfast before leaving on the tour).
Today 14/3 - is a very special day - It is Omer's Birthday, and so we ended the tour with singing him "Happy Birthday" in all 3 languages: Hebrew, Spanish and English. The guide joins us on the Spanish song. We tease Omer that the tour was his birthday gift, but he insist that we must do something for his birthday - he knows the limitations we have in buying gifts (no space in our backpacks!!! no exceptions!!), but he says we can do, like we did to Tal in Buenos Aires - panckakes breakfast. Well, we explain that here in Tortoguero we just don't have the same conditions, and we tell him to forget about it. But we do not really mean it. In descretion, we set a plan how we will prepare a small birthday party for him.
After returning from the canoe tour, we had
a small breakfast, and then we set the kids for some home-schooling. While Omer works with Tal on his Herbrew book, in the open dining room, Nitzan, Shachar and I sneak to the village center, we buy some colored papers, and we get back to our room, where Nitzan and Shachar prepare greeting cards to Omer. Omer is sure that they are learning, just as he.
Later, when all work is done, we rest for a while. I fell asleep in the hammock, and so Tal takes the kids for another tour in the village, this time also to the beach side and some non touristic streets, for day-to-day live shootings, as he likes. upon their return, we discover that the keys to the room were left inside the room, and the room is locked... (last time we had such a story, it ended up with breaking a car window...). The hostel manager, could not find the spare key to our room, and none of her other keys seemed to work. We are doomed to wait, until they locate the "key" guy of the village (it is Sunday, and most people are on the beach or playing baseball or
whatever, just not at their houses). Eventually when he is found, it takes him 20 seconds to open the door - good - now we have our stuff, and we could prepare lunch (we could not even go for lunch in one of the restaurants, as our wallets were also locked in the room...).
After lunch, the kids play a while in the hostel yard - with the hostel's parrot (Matti), searching for the blue crabs in their burrows, running around etc. Nitzan and I, sneak out again, this time our mission is to buy Omer a small gift. We quickly go through some of the souvenir shops we saw the day before, but we do not find something suitable. That's when I decide we have to go further to a workshop we saw the day before, were they make art and jewlery from a local seed called Tagua that has a similar effect and look as if it was
ivory. We get to the place, and to our great disapointment it is closed. But, we quickly find the owner, who opens it only for us - and so we buy Omer a beautiful neckless of a turtle made
of said Tagua natural material. I feel it is the perfect gift for him - he loves sea turtles, it is a memory from this place and day, it is small enough to be bought in the trip and it is very ecological as it is made from a seed.
On the way back to the hostel, with the present, we meet the boys and we all go to the bakery, to have the small birthday party - coffee, cold chocolate drink, a chocolate cake and we even have birthday candles which I bought earlier. We pick a table outside the bakery, ovelooking the canal, and enjoy a marvelous sunset over the canal and the jungle. We light a candle (the wind won't let us light them all..), we sing again birthday songs, Nitzan, Shachar and we give Omer his birthday cards and he reads them all ( In English - from Nitzan and Hebrew & English - from us). Then, we let Omer work a little to find his present. Omer is extaticly happy - both from the present and greeting cards, and from the fact we actually did all of it without him noticing the preparations... He
inquires when did we buy, when did they make the cards etc. etc. He realy fell for our story that he should not expect anything in this remote village, and so his sureprise is even greater - and it shows.
Though we had a day full with activities, we decide to try and observe the turtles nesting. It is not yet realy the season, but there is a slim chance to see turtles coming to the shore. We start walking on the beach at around 9pm, but 10 minutes after, Shachar is complaining that he is too tired and he cannot walk with the sand in his legs. As we arrange for me to go back with him to the hostel, a group of volunteers approaches us and explain that no one is allowed to walk on the beach at this time without an official guide, as it may disturb the turtles. It does not help, that we explain them we were told by our hostel management, that on this part of the beach (the public beach) we could walk, that we are walking with no lights (that may disturb the turtles) etc. We all turn around and go
back to sleep. It was a 1 in a million chances anyway, so we give up easily.
Tomorrow we leave Tortuguero (how sad..) but before we leave, we still want to get to climb to the nearby hill, to get a view of the whole area. So, next morning, we again wake up early, catch the boat at 6 am, that takes us to the next village -
San Francisco. Unlike Tortuguero - this village has no tourists at all, only locals working in the lodges in the area or in the park, or in the little agricultural and fishing industry in the area. 10 minutes on the boat and we reach the village. There, we walk for about an hour, ascending in a muddy trail up the hill. Along most of the trail, right after we leave the last house of the village, we get to see jumping around us tiny red frogs. Thses are the venomous frogs we looked for! We see two types of them - one is completely red with some blue on its legs and another which has similar look, but only has also many black dots all over it, and thus looks like
a jumping ... strawberry... The walk is fairly steep, the mud makes it sleepery and the worse part is that the mosquitos are biting us mercilessly - our repelent seemed to help for a short while, I guess until they got used to its smell or something, but they are back on our legs, hands and everything that is exposed or covered. Nevertheless, the view from the top is gorgeous - we see all the way to Tortuguero village, some of the park, the river canals and its estuary, and on our left - the Atlantic Ocean. We quickly start the way back, as we need to catch the 8am boat back to Tortuguero, in order to still make it on time for the 10am boat leaving to "main land".
We are leaving Tortuguero without seeing turtles (unlike 15 years ago), and the kids are disappointed. But, who knows, they may come back here one day and get to see the turtles... something to wait for.
We are sad to leave this magical and tranquile place, but the boat is leaving and we have to board. We enjoy again the beautiful way back - an hour and a
half along the water canals (we managed to see for a glimpse a few more monkeys), then the 2 hours on the bus and we are back in Cariari - back to traffic, back to noisy and dusty civilization, etc - back to the "real world".
Our next destination - Cahuita Village and National Park, the Carribean part of Costa Rica.
Hasta Pronto,
Lilach
To see more of our photos, click here:
Tortoguerro Photos
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Sabine Van Damme
non-member comment
Happy Birthday
Hi Omer, Congratulations with your 8th birthday. You have had a very beautifull and special birthday gift. Greetings Mario, Sabine, Jessie and Mona