Central America - Costa Rica

---

Ok so I'm writing this a little late but the final month has been a busy one! My first stop in Costa Rica was Monteverde. I had a few connections on my way from Nicaragua and the last one involved a three hour wait for the afternoon bus. I met some German travellers and we tried hitchhiking but it didn't work so we gave up and played cards using one of our backpacks as a table. We also saw a massive iguana who looked hungry so I gave him some leftover chicken. Monteverde was a lovely place, very much geared towards tourists but it didn't feel too busy when I was there. I went to Santa Elena, Curicancha and Monteverde cloud forest reserves. They were all very beautiful and reminded me how much I love being in the woods. I also saw lots of fauna such as hummingbirds, crested guan, toucans, morpho butterflies, agouti and coatimundis. I heard the quetzal many times but never actually saw it...I guess being green in a green forest is good camouflage! I met Mathilde in Monteverde and we decided to do a night tour in Santa Maria reserve. She is French Peruvian so we booked a tour in Spanish which was our common language. This worked out really well as it was just us and two Argentinian girls on the tour. We saw a green tree snake, mot mot bird, green toucan, tarantula and a sloth with her baby. We also all had a go hanging out on a branch like a sloth! Other highlights of my stay in Monteverde included eating ice-cream from a dairy shop in the countryside, chilling out at a treehouse cafe, visiting an orchid garden and climbing to the top of a very tall fig tree!

I met Jenn on the bus to San José and we spent the day exploring the city. In the morning we went to a farmer's market and tried many different fruits, some of which I'd never seen or heard of before! We then visited the main plaza, cathedral and pre-columbian gold museum which contained some amazingly intricate goldwork.

From San José I took a bus to Bataan and then a boat to get to La Tortuga Feliz (happy turtle) volunteer project in Isla Pacuare. I met a fellow new volunteer Alyssa on the boat trip and it took a little longer than normal as a tree had fallen across the river. Luckily a guy happened to be passing with a chainsaw so we managed to get through in the end. We passed through jungle and saw egrets, monkeys and a sloth on the way. When we arrived we had a training session and then got ready for our first night patrol. One of our main duties was to patrol the beach for a 4 hour shift every night. 4 hours is quite a walk anyway but imagine doing that in sand when your body is normally asleep! I found this particularly difficult the first night but was rewarded with spotting a leatherback turtle laying eggs right at the end of our shift. They are really beautiful creatures and so big! It seems quite an effort for them to make their way up the beach, create a nest, lay eggs, cover it with sand to disguise it and then return back to the sea. Unfortunately eggs are poached so our job was to try to find the turtles before the poachers. It is illegal to poach as these turtles are endangered but normally there are no police patrolling such a remote area. The project have established a non-aggressive policy with the poachers, if they find the turtle first we don't confront them and vice-versa. Some of the guides now employed by the project are ex-poachers so this gives alternative employment. If we manage to find eggs we transfer them to the hatchery. The hatchery is another part of the beach which is guarded by volunteers and staff from the project so again we did this in shifts. Our other main job in the daytime was to continue building the hatchery. Old sand and debris from the previous year is dug out and replaced with new sand. Shovelling, pushing a heavy wheelbarrow and walking in the sand at night burns a lot of calories. Luckily we had lots of yummy carb filled meals made by Robert and Jess! There was no electricity or wifi but in my free time I enjoyed the simple pleasures of life like sunbathing, cooling off in the sea, pilates, colouring in, drawing, reading and chatting.

I felt sad to leave the project but was looking forward to meeting my sister in San José. Ali and I spent a night there and then took a bright pink bus which would have made Barbie proud to a town called Sierpe. After lunch we took a James Bond style boat ride along a river surrounded by mangrove and jungle. It was sunny when we left but quickly turned into a thunderstorm with really heavy rain. When we reached the coast the captain had to navigate us through some rocks whilst the waves came crashing towards us. We arrived at Agujitas, Bahia Drake in a bit of a bedraggled state. The climate here was very humid so our things never really dried out properly even when it wasn't raining. However this is one of the most biodiverse places in the world and well there is a reason it's called rainforest! We went on a few walks along the coast to a nearby beach which was very picturesque and included crossing a hanging bridge. Along the way we saw scarlet macaws and capuchin monkeys. We befriended two different dogs on these trips but the monkeys didn't like dogs and tried to scare them away by jumping up and down. We also joined a tour to Corcovado national park. This first involved a boat trip to La Sirena ranger station and we saw dolphins on the way. We then had a long walk in the jungle and our tour leader was very good and showed us lots of wildlife such as peccaries, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, coatimundis, tapirs, lizards, caiman, boa constrictor, woodpecker, guan, motmot and morpho butterflies. However I spotted the toucan and hawk first so maybe I could get a job there too! Back in the village we enjoyed the culinary delights of brainfreeze cold smoothies, a massive fish called Walou and eating pancakes at a cafe with a beautiful sea view.

---