Grad Student Travel Journal: The Ride to Tortuguerro

There has been so much happening here that I can barely remember everything, let alone have time to blog about it.  But I most definitely am still trying!  In fact, I've had to start taking notes on my phone throughout the day just so that I can remember all the cool things the guides have been telling us.  

I need to give a quick shout-out to the tour guides here in Costa Rica.  So far, we've gotten some really high quality guides!  Donald, from our all-day tour on Tuesday, was excellent, as I had stated in my previous blog.  Alberto, from our city tour, was very entertaining, and now we have Stephen, who is with us for three days.  

Stephen is simply fantastic!  He actually has a BA from, I think, USC in Marine Biology, and an MA, if I recall correctly, from Cornell.  He didn't tell us how he ended up here in Costa Rica, but he did say that he was teaching at a university here.  Then one day a friend told him, "hey, why don't you be a tour guide?  It's just like teaching."  Which, it is, as I can attest to, being a former tour guide myself.  So Stephen did it, and now it's starting to become a full time thing. 

We are now on a three-day tour to Tortuguerro, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.  The tour bus, this time a "real" tour bus, complete with cushy chairs and a bathroom in the back, picked us up at the Marriott at 6 a.m.  It was so hard leaving the comfort of the most perfect hotel beds that early in the morning, but now at the end of the day, I can definitely say it was all worth it.  

It took us about an hour to get out of the town because we ended up having to pick up other guests at different hotels, but once we got out of the big city, it took us only about a half an hour to get to the top of the mountain range that divides Costa Rica into the Pacific side and the Caribbean side.  It was all misty up there, with some variable rains.  

After driving for maybe about an hour, we stopped at our breakfast station.  They served us a partial "typical" breakfast...not partial in that it was small, but partial in that the typical Costa Rican breakfast consists of Gallo Pinto (rice and beans), eggs, and fried (candied?) plantains.  Here's what it normally looks like:

But today the plantains were absent.  And, in all the breakfasts we've had so far, the eggs have been scrambled, but today they were easy over.  

We only had about 40 minutes for breakfast, so we ate quickly because we were at some kind of veranda restaurant that opened up to a path that led to a bridge that crossed a large stream, and then into the rainforest.  

I didn't walk too far into the rainforest, but I was charged just by being there!  It felt just like home...except that I had to look out for any dangerous critters.  That's a new experience for me.  

Shirley, my colleague, on the rainforest path. 

I've got a very short video of what the forest sounds like.  There are these beetles that make this loud sound, and Stephen said that they're "nature's warning system," because if there is a predator near, they get silent.  

[I'll insert the video when I get back home. The wifi isn't strong enough at my current hotel.]

He also said that they make the trees "rain."  These beetles spend over half their lives underground, and as they progress in their growth they crawl up the tree into the branches, then cling there...and urinate. If you're standing under the tree, you might think it's rain, but actually you're getting peed on by beetles.  

I'll give more fun facts in another blog.  For now, I want to share with you about the rest of the bus ride.  This road, that took us back down the mountain and towards the Caribbean, is full of pot holes.  The first thing that Stephen did when we all got on the bus this morning was warn us about that, and let us know that our driver, Luis, is an expert at navigating this road.  He was absolutely right about that.  Luis was just amazing.  As he weaved left to right, we hardly felt the bouncing.  That guy really knows what he's doing.  

On that note, we've had some superb drivers as well.  The driving here is nuts - no lanes, and there seems to be no real rules either - but all of our bus drivers have been fantastic!  Even with cars speeding past and cutting in front of us, even having to cross tiny bridges in big vehicles, even driving along roads with a cliff drop on one side and a car passing on the other, these drivers never made me feel like I was in danger.  They made it all look easy.  

Anyway, we were in a great big tour bus, and at one point we had to stop to wait for all the other tour busses for the day.  Stephen made sure to tell us why:  because at that point along the road, the busses have to travel in a caravan so that the tour guide in the first bus can get out, hike up his pants, and cross the bridges if they are flowed over with water, just to make sure that the bridge didn't wash away.  

He said, "folks, you know Jungle Adventure in Disneyland?  Well, this is the real thing."  

Perhaps it was lucky that our windows in the bus were so high up that we couldn't see all the bridges we were driving over.  But there were some side bridges, so I imagine this is what they looked like: 

In any case, Luis never made me feel scared.  He handled that great big bus AND those tiny bridges with so much ease that I even forgot that there was any danger.  

With the ride seeming so treacherous, it was really surprising to get to the end of the road and find this huge bus depot.  There were hundreds of people coming and going...all the tourists who were leaving on the busses that all of us arrived in, and all of us getting onto ferry boats to get to Tortuguerro.  

So began the second part of our trip - the water bus.  

I've been on the tour boats in the ocean before, but never on a river, so that was cool.  This river was smooth today, so it was a really nice ride.  Plus our new driver, I think his name was Bernardo, is from the area, and was able to spot all kinds of wildlife along the way.  We saw a red-tailed hawk, which doesn't happen, so we were very lucky.  We also saw a few vultures, and another bird that I think is known as the needle-nosed duck.  I'll have to go look that one up.  

But my favorite sight:  seeing a spider monkey crawling up an 'ulu tree.  

I have to download the pictures from my point-and-shoot camera, so I'll revise this post later when I can get to those.  

We were on the water for maybe an hour before we finally made it to our hotel, the Mawamba Lodge.  We got here right around 12 noon.  We had already had such an amazing day, that I can't believe there's even more! 

I'll write all about the lodge in the next blog post.  

Aloha! 

La Paz Waterfall Gardens

La Paz Waterfall Gardens was the last stop on our all-day tour, and it does not disappoint.  It is a privately owned park, and they declare themselves to be a sanctuary for animals that have been rescued from trafficking or abuse, or hurt in the wild and found.  There are signs up that say that these animals are kept in the park because, for whatever reason, they cannot be returned to the wild.  

While this does sound like a very good cause, there might be a caveat in there.  More about that at the end of this post.  

There is a trail that leads you through the park, from one sanctuary to the next.  Our guide led us throughout the park, so we went first to the bird house.  There was a gray hawk, a few vultures, and even a falcon.  There were a bunch of green macaws, of the smaller variety, as well as a bunch of smaller birds that I couldn't get the names of.  There were some scarlet macaws too, but again, not the really large ones.  

The really exciting part was the toucan house.  This is the where they let tourists take pictures with the toucans.  Here's mine: 

I know that there is a whole bunch of animal exploitation issues to explore here, but I do have to admit, this was really cool.  

Next we quickly ran through the monkey house, where they have two of the three endemic species to Costa Rica. (I won't name them, because I've already forgotten...oops!)  

From there it was the butterfly house.  I have very mixed feelings about this.  

First, it was super cool.  Butterflies.  Everywhere.  

But that's where the mixed feelings come in.  They literally were everywhere.  Including on the floor.  You really have to watch where you walk in here if you don't want to kill a butterfly.  It made me a little anxious the whole time, watching the floor while at the same time wanting to be all excited by the butterflies flying around my head...  

[I have to download pics first before I can include them here. I'll update this post once I get back home.]

I think overall I'd have to declare that "cool" wins out over "anxious," but still, I would have liked to enjoy without worrying about murdering an innocent and beautiful butterfly.  

From there we went into the hummingbird sanctuary.  Those buggers fly so fast that you need extra special camera equipment to catch a still shot!  So I just took a couple of short videos instead.  

They've got all kinds of hummingbirds, and they whiz past your head like miniature airplanes!  It is very exciting.  

After that was our lunch stop, just in time after a long and exciting day.  You could tell that they cater to tourists a lot, because they had mostly food that Americans respond well to, like hot dogs and french fries, along with other higher class fare.  But there wasn't any local food, except for plantains.  

I must take a moment to mention the bathrooms.  The sinks are designed so that the faucet water looks like it's coming out of a stone face, like a waterfall.  And the knob to turn the water on is disguised as a rock.  It was very creative.  

After a much needed food and rest stop, we continued on.  There was a snake house, but we skipped it and went straight to the wild cats.  They had a cougar there who was not too happy about getting its picture taken.  There was this woman who kept following it around with her iPad...and it was obvious that she had already gotten either a lot of pictures or a lot of video of it, but she didn't move away!  She kept standing there, inches from the glass, with the cougar just inches way from the glass on the other side.  

There was a large crowd of people waiting to see the cougar, but this lady just refused to move.  And the cougar was getting angry.  Its ears went flat back and it started to growl, but that lady just would not move.  

This is one of the downsides to a park like this.  I understand that these animals have been "rescued," but how much better are their conditions if now they are to be entertainment for humans who have no sense of how dangerous this situation might be under other circumstances?  

From there we went to see the jaguars, and this question became more prominent than ever.  They had a male and female jaguar, but they were in separate enclosures (a.k.a.cages), and the female was definitely bothered, maybe in heat.  She kept pacing back and forth across the front of her glass, growling, and looking across at the male.  The male was looking back at her, holding her gaze.  Then the female lept up to the upper level of her enclosure, where there was no glass, only bars.  It was pretty incredible, because those bars were not that high up, and any human over 5' 10" could have simply reached up to them.  The female was sticking her paw out through them, and I could just image some stupid guy taking that chance...  

Although I truly did not enjoy seeing these magnificent creatures locked up and on display, I do have to admit that I might never have seen a jaguar otherwise.  A lot of the indigenous people in the Americas worshipped the jaguar, and now I know why.  You can just see the power in them.  I can't even explain how it felt to see them up close...  

I did not take any pictures of them.  It somehow felt wrong to do so.  There were crowds of people around them, all acting like spoiled children trying to get the closest shot, and I did not want to join those ranks.  I simply wanted to admire these jaguar, and honor them for what they were.  

After that excitement, we went last to see the frogs.  It must have been the wrong time of day, though because I only saw a green poison dart frog.  

There were others to be seen, but they all hid from us.  

It had been pouring over us since lunch, so everyone was rushing through the sanctuaries a bit faster than they otherwise would have, and I was no exception.  The thing about rain, though...is that it makes for a spectacular waterfall.  

There were four waterfalls in the park, and we went to the two tallest.  The first was called [name] and the second, and tallest, was called White Magic.  Here's my money shot in front of Magia Blanca:  

[Sorry! You'll have to wait for the camera download for this one! I'll update this post as soon as I get home.]

This was so worth it.  

After this we were soaking wet, from both the rain and the spray from the waterfall.  And I was super, super exhiliarated.  

I am so glad we did this tour.  We had a long drive home - over an hour - and we were all soaking wet, but no one really complained.  It was a great group, there was a lot of cameraderie, and even though thigns didn't turn out perfectly, they did turn out well.  And I had the time of my life.  :) 

Aloha!