It’s been a while since my last post, but I’ve been out and about doing some serious adventuring. I wish I could send all of my photos to all of you! After a week of so much adventure and bonding with both gringo compañeros and Costa Rican/Panamanian scenery, it’s difficult to know where to begin (say nothing of what details to exclude in order to keep this blog post at reasonable length)!!
*edit – after a couple single-spaced pages on Word I realized I’d have to split this post. You are now reading part 1 of 2 covering my trip to Tortuguero and Panamá.
Like virtually all excursions I’ve had so far here, this one started extremely early in the morning. Most of the kids in our program (about 25 or so of us) met up at the University at 6:00 am (meaning I had to get up a little before 5:00...the horror!). After a short wait – read: I should have slept more – we were joined on the tour bus by almost all of the students from the USAC San Ramón program (about 15). Over the
next few days we would get to know each other very well, and many of us made some good very good friends.
After stopping for breakfast, our bus continued to the east coast (that is, the Caribbean) whereupon we had to get off the bus and take a boat into Tortuguero National Park. From our first glimpses of the canals that led to Pachira Lodge, we knew the park would not fail to captivate us over the next few days. I know I must sound redundant – it seems that every blog post I write I mention how jaw-droppingly majestic this or that part of Costa Rica is, but the simple truth is that it simply is as good as I try to make it sound, and usually better still. This country has given me no reason yet to cease my praises of her natural beauty, and as such I won’t. You really have to see it yourself (hint, hint – come visit me!).
Pachira Lodge itself was quite the place in itself. Some of it looked a bit like something off the set of a Survivor series, but we were well accommodated by large rooms, excellent food, courtesy usage of canoes/kayaks, a spa, and two swimming pools. After lunch in the hotel, getting settled into our rooms (I roomed with a friend name Andrew this entire trip), and a short swim in one of the pools, we headed over to Tortuguero Village, which was on the actual Caribbean coast (whereas we were separated from the village by another canal). We watched a short video on the work being done at Tortuguero and around the world to protect the sea turtles that come here multiple times every year to lay eggs. Later we got our first look at the beach, and found some tracks of a turtle who had come the night before. We returned to the hotel that evening and had dinner, after which I joined my friends Ashley, Katy, and Brittany for a late swim in the rain. We met a very nice Tico named Alex in the pool (it was just the five of us) who playfully ordered us to not speak English while there, for which I was actually quite thankful – this week has really set me back on my Spanish skills! Finally, we joined a couple more Heredia girls and a couple San Ramón guys for some card games in one of our rooms.
The next morning we had a guided hike through a small section of a rain forest nearby. We had no problem getting up that morning, thanks to the lodge’s healthy population of howler monkeys. In case you’ve never had the pleasure of waking up to a pack of howler monkeys, imagine Chewbacca of the Star Wars universe standing right outside your window, screaming at you at the top of his lungs at 4:30 of 5:00 in the morning.
*edit- in his last post Ben described this phenomenon very humurously and surprisingly accurately. i encourage you to review this information now.
Anyway.... The rain forest tour was magnificent. I can hardly compare it to anything near my home part of the world (i.e. Minnesota/Wisconsin north woods…apples and oranges, and all that), but I can certainly say that this was one of the more beautiful woods I’ve ever walked through. The sheer variety of plant and animal life to which I was exposed was amazing in itself. To provide but one of many examples, I’ve never seen trees as big as some of the ones there – trying to take it all in was a task in itself. My solitary complaint about the hike was the state of the trails. Though it is through no fault of the park service there, the grand majority of the trail was wet and muddy, littered with unavoidable puddles. Luckily our lodge provided rubber boots (required in the forest) to trudge through.
That afternoon we had lunch at the hotel again, took advantage of the pools yet again, and then got on a boat (again) to take a wildlife/canal tour, which turned out to be immensely successful. We had the good fortune of having a tour guide blessed with extraordinary sight, spotting iguanas and toucans in far-off trees or practically invisible caimans in marshy waters. Although it was difficult to get a good photo of all that we saw (due to distance, a moving boat, and a not yet experienced camera operator), the sights and sounds of the jungle wildlife, backdropped by a beautiful sunset, left an impression in my mind that will not easily be erased. I did not yet realize, however, that the best was yet to come – nine hours of my life which included two of the most majestic (there’s that word again, in all its sincerity) and awe-inspiring events I’ve ever witnessed.
That evening, we went to the Caribbean beach once again, but this time all was dark. This was our night tour – our chance to see, if we could find one, a sea turtle laying her eggs on the beach. It was late in the season for the Green Sea Turtle, and they told us our chances were slim. Moreover, the beach goes into a sort of total lockdown at night – these people take their job of protecting the turtles VERY seriously. You are only allowed on the beach at night with a professional guide, who undertakes strict training and whose certification is easily stripped from him or her. White light (flashlights, head lamps, etc) is strictly prohibited, and even brightly colored clothing is not allowed on the beach, because the bright light disturbs the turtles. You don’t even want to know what happens if you get caught with a camera.
After a short wait, the guide of our group of about 10 (larger groups are also banned, so we split up) received a radio call that they had found a turtle and they she was available for groups to observe. After stumbling around the beach (and the path to it), led only by the silhouette of our guide and his dim red light, we found her. We missed the digging of the hole, but got to see her up close and personal depositing her eggs (which break the triple-digit count every time these turtles do this). The turtle, we were told, goes into a sort of trance while the eggs are being laid, which is a process that takes around a half-hour, but can last much longer. She certainly seemed oblivious to those of us watching and to the ranger holding up her back legs/fins so we could clearly see the eggs. After she was finished, she took the next 45 minutes to slowly and carefully cover the eggs with surrounding sand. At times she flat-out violently flung the sand behind her, overshooting the hole and spraying us onlookers with sand. We waited for her to finish as other groups cycled in and out to watch, when finally she headed back to the water, ever so slowly. The guides were extremely careful not to shine any of their dim lights into her face. The whole lot of us advanced slowly behind her as she crawled back, and after getting in the water, we could hardly see her dark shape after swimming a mere 20 feet into the water under the black sky. Though not a single picture was taken, it was a night of images that will never leave me.
We returned to the hotel around 10:30, and shortly I went to bed. After about five hours of sleep, I crawled out of bed again at 4:30 in order to head to the dock by 5:00. This morning a few of us would head back to the beach, but this time to search for baby turtles. They told us that we were very fortunate the night before to find a turtle and see so much of the process, but it was even more unlikely that we would find any baby turtles, again due to the time of year. Well, lightning struck twice.
Shortly after arriving at the beach our guide found a group of them – they had just popped out of the sand. There were so many of them, and of course they were all ridiculously cute. Yet another one of nature’s wondrous curiosities – each and every tortuguita (little turtle) knows exactly which direction it needs to go and does so with full force and soon as it hits the air. You can turn them around or even move them down the beach some distance and they’ll eventually figure it out nonetheless. Despite the sad statistic that only 1 to 2% of these little guys will survive, we did not enjoy watching them any less. Rules on the beach in the morning are significantly less strict, and as such my camera was put to good use (though, as luck would have it – as if I were going to ask for more – my batteries died that morning, but thankfully after I had taken many shots). We had nearly a full hour to watch them scurry across the sand in their desperate pursuit of the sea and a safe life. To top it all off, the whole scene was brought to us by a Caribbean sunrise so beautiful that a proper description would put my own powers of written expression to shame. Being able to watch an adult turtle lay her eggs the night before and seeing a group of them begin their lives the next morning brought to me a powerful sense of satisfaction, of almost participating in something so breathtaking and yet something that not many will ever see outside of Discovery Channel.
Majestic.
scroll up for part 2
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