Kayaking in Tortuguero National Park

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Geo: 9.38945, -84.1347

We kayaked twice in the Tortuguero National Park, once with a guide and once with ourselves. A few of the ins and outs: The Park office opens at 6:00 am and there is a rush to get each group checked in and on their way. Suspect the upscale lodges register their guests and then pay after they have been in the park because you see their boats go roaring up the river without stopping at the National Park Office

For the rest of us: You must first go and pay and check in with the National Park. They want to know from what country and how many and then pay. As mentioned earlier, they do take credit cards as payment, but must show proof i.e., passport or copy. We have our laminated copies which are safe on a kayak ride.

The earlier the better you get to the park the better for seeing all you can see. The first guided groups go from 6:30 to 8:30 and the next 8:30 to 10:30. Not sure the times after the early morning times. The downside is the guided kayak type of trips is they all take the same route and so you are following behind someone else. The upside is sometimes there is a really cool sight your guide might have never seen. After the first about 30 minutes, the bunching lessens and you are on your own.

From what we had read about kayaking in the park, it seemed there were several water trails you could go down and had to be careful and not set lost. Did not see this from our brief time in the park but if return will try to find some more of the possible places to explore.

We decided to use a guide our first trip to get the feel of how things are done but if you have kayak experience you pretty much can head out on your own and see what you can see.

On first trip, one of the highlights was the caiman submerged in the water but you could clearly see the eyes and snout under the grass cover. Would have never seen this on our own. Lots of nice herons, and egrets perched enjoying the early morning sun.

Got to see yellow crowned night heron, anhinga, iguana, great blue heron, egrets, squirrel cuckoo, and a nice jacana that put on a great show for us. The highlight of the guided trip was an side trip into a very small area and suddenly we had 5 boatbill herons right at eye level with us. These are such great birds for us to watch and have never been so lucky to see them this close. The cool thing was they seemed to be as entertained by us as we were by them.

On our way in, we had our first brief sighting of the Keel Billed Toucan. Another downside of the guided trip was we were constantly on the move and did not have a leisurely trip enjoying the sights and sounds like we usually like to do.

Private day paddle:

We started out by heading straight up the channel where the motorized boats were heading and found a channel and headed up it. On the way into the channel, we saw are area where there were several Montezuma Orepundola nests with the birds moving back and forth from the nests to the trees and back again.

The highlights of the self guided trip were the sighting of the spider monkeys. There was another guided boat in the channel and the guide pointed to the monkeys but did not stick around to see what would happen. Since we were on our own, we hung around and were rewarded with the monkeys moving into an area where we got a better view. This was our first experience with the spider monkey and our first impression was they had quite long arms and tails. Got to watch them for a while and were amused by a mother and baby.. When you looked closely at the baby head, almost looked like what an alien looks like. The spider monkey according to our mammal chart, is about the same size as the howler monkey.

As we left the channel we had been in, it was time for group two of the early morning groups to be coming and so we crossed over to the other side of the channel to help control the wake and the boats. As we were heading back started hearing the familiar sounds of the toucan and then heard the crackling sound we had heard when we saw the keel billed toucan. Wow, we were rewarded with two birds calling to each other. It was a great day in the park.

Because we were in the main channel where the motorized boats were, you had to be mindful of their wakes as they passed you by. Some of the drivers were courteous and slowed as they passed us and other just full tilt boogie. You learn to turn your boat into their wake but makes your trip home a little longer.

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Photos

entrance to the park

love these rules
found these rules where you buy your ticket for the boat back to La Pavona

squirrel cuckoo

caiman
this caiman was submerged and the guides knew where to look

caiman
no hands in the water!

three tiger herons
making their territorial sounds to each other