Costa Rica

Las Baulas is the Spanish for leatherback turtles.

For our last spot in Costa Rica, we decided to go and see the beaches, just so to have a more complete picture of the country. The aim was to go to Playa Grande to stay overnight and see the turtles, and then move up to Playa Conchal the next day - this having the reputation of being the most beautiful beach in Costa Rica.

Playa Grande has been part of the Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas since 1991, when the government finally decided to protect the leatherback turtles that come to nest here. Having a national park here prevents FRONT beach development and ensures that one of the most important leatherback nesting areas in the world is preserved for future generations. Set back from the beach there is actually quite a lot of development for a national park - and more to come, seen the number of lots for sale that we saw everywhere - however not right on the beach, which ensures that lights are kept to a minimum. Lights disorientate the turtles and put them off coming back to lay their eggs - turtles tend to return to lay at the beach where they were born, so if they don´t, this impacts on them a great deal. This is why no lights are allowed on the beach, apart from the infra-red that the park rangers.

The leatherback is critically endangered from over-hunting, a lack of protected nesting sites and plastic bags, which look too similar to their main food, jelly fish. In an effort to protect the decreasing population of turtles, park rangers on Playa Grande collect the eggs daily and incubate them to increase the chances of survival. Normally, only 1 out 1,000 turtles make it to adulthood!!!! The problem is, even when they are incubated, sea turtles must hatch on the beach and enter the water by themselves, otherwise memory imprinting does not occur and they will never return to their birthplace to nest.

At Playa Grande you can book turtle-egg-laying sessions for $16, which all goes to support the conservation effort. Tourists go to the office to register for a place and are told at what time the nesting is going to occur for that night, depending on the tide. The turtles nest at high tide because they are very heavy and it is hard to hike up to the beach.... For us the time was set between 6 and 10 pm - during this period you go back to the office and sit there waiting around till a turtles shows up. At this point the rangers come to get you and they lead you to the turtle, which can be looked at only from behind and cannot be touched. We were lucky - like we have been for a while - and at 7 pm a 1.3 m leatherback turtle weighing 320 kg showed up. It is not like there are millions of this turtles coming to nest there, it is only between 50 and 400 each year between October and March, so I think we were really lucky. Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtle of all, they are huge. We were able to see her deposit the eggs in the meter-deep hole and then cover them all up (futile work since the rangers were going to dig them all up again...). The whole process takes 1-2 hours - to dig out the hole, drop the eggs and cover it up. So we had two groups of 15 tourists all standing there taking turns to look at this giant turtles depositing her eggs. They cannot see very well but I am sure they must notice all these people moving behind them... not sure how conservational this is, but I guess they must have figured out that it does not bother the animals to the point of not coming back. Quite a surreal experience for a human though!

Ah yes! The curious thing is that you only pay the National Park if you actually manage to see a turtle, otherwise you just book again for the next night. This means that you sit around waiting and, as soon as a turtle comes to shore, all tourists queue up to pay the fee and then run to watch the egg laying!! Crazy but very just.

The next day - after seeing the type of beach Playa Grande is now in the rainy season - we decided not to go to visit Playa Conchal, which on top of things could only be reached by an expensive taxi ride. We decided to walk back to Tamarindo instead along the length of Playa Grande, which took the whole of an hour as we were looking for sand dollars, which unfortunately were all broken. At the river estuary which separates Playa Grande from Tamarindo (big built up seaside resort) we boarded a small motor boat to cross the river and then negotiated a river tour with the boat owner to go and see the mangrove swamps, behind the lure of crocodiles, monkeys etc. The river trip was excellent until we desembarked to go ´looking for monkeys´. We were wearing shorts and T´shirts and I had flip flops on... Ever tried to walk in the mangrove swamps?? Well. You should NOT go there with short sleeves or flip flops. The ground is very soft and muddy, I was slipping all over the place and it is not like there is a path there, you have to walk through vegetation some of which has got big thorns. And of course it is full of mosquitos, some carrying dengue!!!!! We ventured in for about 20 mins and our guide actually led us very quickly to some howling monkeys, which we looked at for about 3 minutes till we decided to quickly retire back to the boat, myself covered in mud from the flipping of the flip flops which kept getting stuck into the mud, whenever I did not lose them along the way. Arghh!! I was really furious with the guide for not saying we were going to walk through this place and lie about the mosquitos - he said there were none when I asked!! Ok, that was probably a stupid question to ask - are there mosquitos in the swamps... - but saying no was not too brilliant either. Later it was a good laugh but at the time I guarantee it wasn´t. Plus we could be incubating dengue as we speak!!!

So fingers crossed...

Playa Grande - this is the beach where the turtles make their nests

Pics from the river trip

Mangroves

Today we have crossed into Nicaragua and currently we are staying at the El Puerto hotel in San Juan del Sur. Tomorrow morning at 5 am we are going to see more egg-laying turtles, but a different breed.

On Tuesday we visited another of Costa Rica`s super national parks, Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja - the old lady`s corner! Excellent park, one of the best we have seen. The weather was terrible - we are in the rainy season at the moment, which is how we are not having great difficulty in finding transport and accomodation. During the tourist dry season things are apparently very hard to manage as there are people everywhere. Already now we are seeing lots of tourists, more than we have in a long time, so we can just about imagine what the high season is like. Anyways, the rainy season is finishing but about two weeks ago it has rained so much that most of the Guanacaste region (where we are now, north-west Pacific area) has been flooded and lots of people have lost their homes.

So the weather has been pretty miserable with daily rain, and when we got to the park, the volcano could not be seen at all. In fact, they have shut the crater access off because of mud slides and other dangers. It is almost 2,000 m high and therefore a hike uphill of 8 steep km, which probably we would have not done even if the weather had been good.
We hiked around the Sector de las Pailas instead, the cauldron circuit, which was absolutely stunning.

The land here is very alive (Rincon de la Vieja last erupted in 1991) and the hike takes you through hot springs, surphur pools, bubbling mud pots and lots of fumaroles. The north-eastern part of the trail goes through dense forest with beautiful huge ficus trees and LOTS OF ANIMALS. We came across a large group of white-faced monkeys with babies which stayed around for ages - in fact, after about an hour of intense observation, we were the ones to leave the scene! Then we saw a large rodent of which we cannot remember the name, a beautiful white squirrel with a black line on the back, a smaller group of capuchin monkeys and... the coatis. The coatis turned up just as we were setting up our picnic, as they do. As soon as we spotted one coming towards us, we started taking out the cameras, not knowing that the coati had a plan... Before we realised what it was doing, it had been on the table and grabbed hold of our big packet of cheese and ran off!! After about 5 minutes it came back, at which point we started to feed it bread to ensure it would not get the rest of the food (we had 2 packages of cheese, luckily). Notices in the park warn not to feed the animals, but quite frankly we had no choice. Either we fed them, or we could have not had any food ourselves... they are quite ravenous and have big teeth and claws. Later we heard stories from the rangers saying that some tourists got scratched up and needed stitching for trying to retrieve the food back from the coatis!!

We almost forgot: in this park live the most vicious sand flies we have ever come across!

ANGOLO ITALIANO

Questi angoli italiani si sono quasi estinti perche`purtroppo non riesco a starci dietro! Ci spostiamo abbastanza rapidamente (specialmente ora che ci mancano soltanto poco piu`di due mesi) e scaricare le foto, selezionarle, caricarle e scrivere il blog richiede tempo - forse un paio di ore per capitolo? Dura quando si rientra stanchi da un giro e poi il giorno dopo si riparte subito... e la nostra stagionatura certo non aiuta...
Comunque!
Il parco nazionale `L`angolo della vecchia` e`un parco bellissimo. Una parte include fumarole e pozze di fango ribollente, l`altra una foresta tropicale asciutta con alberi vecchissimi e molto molto scenici. E in mezzo agli alberi e`pieno di scimmie! Abbiamo incontrato un gruppo grande di scimmie dalla faccia bianca, bellissime, all`inizio facevano le boccacce (cercando di spaventarci e farci andare via, immagino) poi si sono rilassate e sono venute anche abbastanza vicino. Poi abbiamo avuto un incontro con dei coatis (non credo ci sia un nome in italiano) che sono delle specie di procioni con il naso appuntito quasi piatto per annusare il terreno, molto carini e famelici. Uno ci ha fregato il pacchetto di formaggio e se l `e`filata!! poi e`tornato e per timore che si fregasse pure l`altro gli abbiamo dato mezzo pacchetto di pane. Tra un po`me lo strappava dalle mani!! Mazza questi animali selvatici...

insomma una giornata megagalattica, paesaggi nuovi e interessanti, ponticelli di tronco di albero, sentieri bellissimi, e le scimmie e i coatis a completare il quadro!

la costa rica e`davvero un paese ricco di animali, ne abbiamo visti piu`qui che in tutto il viaggio messo insieme (a parte le galapagos, chiaro). sono solo circa 30 anni che il governo ha preso la direzione dei parchi nazionali e dell`eco turismo, pero`pare che l`abbiano fatto in tempo prima che distruggessero tutto. I costaricani sono generalmente carini e gentili ed e`chiaro che prendono il turismo molto seriamente. Raccomandiamo una visita da queste parti a coloro che non sanno dove fare le prossime ferie! Magari combinata con il Nicaragua, che ancora non abbiamo visto ma che essendo qua attaccato dovrebbe avere anche lui parecchie scimmie e coccodrilli da offrire.

Ecco le foto:

As already mentioned, from La Fortuna we bought a bus-boat-bus package to Santa Elena/Monteverde, a beautiful ride over the Arenal lake that saved us the 8-hour bus journey that nobody really does... We booked a couple of nights at a hostel on hostels.com - the Sleepers Sleep Cheap hostel. What a great place! When we saw the name online, we tought we had to try it, and what an an excellent choice!! The owners are a young family, Ronny and Joceline, who have 3 young children and are extremely sociable and helpful. For $16 a night we have enjoyed a nice clean room with bathroom and view, a kitchen, free internet, breakfast, private locker, and... well everything we needed, really. Bloody great, and it proves that Costa Rica is only partially expensive...though surely expensive.

The hostel

We got to Santa Elena at around midday but, as the bumpy ride and the overwhelming scenery indeed overwhelmed us, we felt too tired to start another tour straight away. So we took the afternoon out to have a look around and try to choose what activities to do - this place really reminds you of Disneyland - just the stuff is real. There are butterfly farms, humming bird farms, reptile and frog farms, insect farms, bat farms, a number of canopy/zip lines, hanging bridges, you name it. Oh yes, and the cloud forest reserves!! These are the Santa Elena reserve and the more famous Monteverde reserve, which is the main reason people actually come here, though in the end they all probably end up all sort of other stuff.

RANARIUM

The first place we decided to visit was the Ranarium , a fairly large place that turned out to be absolutely amazing. They have some 30 species of frogs on show, one more stunning than the other. On the way in, in the corridor, we came across a non-resident orange-kneed tarantula, another amazingly beautiful local creature, of which we managed to take a few good pics. Here is one:

Unfortunately, the frogs cannot be photographed with flash as otherwise they go blind, so we have very few and very blurred pics of those. We were allowed to flash them out on our first tour, which gave us great joy and satisfaction but that now makes us feel really guilty... Anyways! The amazing frogs. You have frogs that rely on camouflage and try to remain as low-key as possible (leaf frogs, usually green with some other striking feature, who are active at night) and others, such as the poison dart frogs, that try their best to stand out . This is a defense strategy that entails advertising a frogs toxicity with bright colours > i. e. do not touch me!! So you have glass frogs, hour glass frogs, milk frogs, bull frogs, gaudy leaf frogs (the front cover frogs of all) they are so perfect and gorgeous that they look like they are fake.

Below are a couple of our photo attempts...

Leaf frog at night, active

Leaf frog during the day, sleeping - yes, we went back to see them again...

This website has some nice pics that give an idea of what sort of frogs we are talking about >
http://www.waterfallgardens.com/lapaz-frogs.htmlhttp://www.waterfallgardens.com/lapaz-frogs.html

SANTA ELENA RESERVE

We decided to visit the Santa Elena reserve as opposed to the Monteverde one mainly because the former is much less visited, something like 10 times less. Monteverde is private and gets a lot of money and scores of people go up and down it every day, while Santa Elena is managed by the local High School and is less touristy and wilder. So we thought we could spread the money better and also have a better chance to see animals by going to Santa Elena. But we were wrong regarding the animals: our guide informed us that there are very few animals around: we are in the rainy season and there is little food around and they tend to stay at lower altitudes.. The only animal that we saw was a resident peccary ( like a small wild boar) which introduced himself by sticking his head between my knees while we were standing chatting... I thought it was a dog, till I looked down and got a real fright, which immediately turned into concern about the new colour of my trousers...Peccaries are not exactly the cleanest of forest animals.
So we spent the morning walking around in the beautiful cloud forest with the guide showing us tiny flowers and plants with his very powerful telescope. Quite interesting, especially since we could take pictures via the telescope which made it specially good fun.
So it was a good visit but we felt somehow disappointed not to see any monkeys or sloths. Later on the same day we booked a night walk at the Ecology Sanctuary - a place where there are banana and coffee plantations and therefore lots of food for animals - but even there we saw relatively little. We saw a sloth on a tree, a couple of orange-kneed tarantulas nests, a few insects and that was all. Maybe all a trap to make money out of tourists? We will never know, the forest is not a zoo and so each trip is different. Nevertheless, going into the woods at night is quite an awesome experience in itself.

One of our best telescope shots..

Just outside the reserve entrance lots of water feeders were attracting dozens of humming birds of many kinds. We spent about one hour looking at them - the big ones seem a lot more concerned about humans than the little ones.

JEWELS OF THE RAINFOREST EXHIBITION

On our last day we went to see the world's largest private insect collection at Selvatura - by world famous entomologist Dr. Richard Whitten. Thousands of insects, butterflies and other incredible specimens from all over the world, all collected in one huge room and displayed like an art collection. WOW!

While we were there, we also visited the reptile and amphibian live collection - more snakes and frogs and a very curious lizard that they call Jesus Christ Lizard because it is so fast that it runs on water!!!!

The Whitten collection

After lunch we took a bus to Liberia, more north-west, from where we are going to visit another National Park and the beach.

We left San Jose on Friday in the morning and got to La Fortuna at 13.30 - La Fortuna is the town next to Volcan Arenal. By 14.30 we were being picked up by a minibus for an evening tour to Volcan Arenal and the hotsprings, and on the right tour. La Fortuna is extremely touristy and competition is fierce. As soon as we got to our hotel we were immediately approached with a volcano tour offer. Great price, tour starting at 5 pm and ending with thermal baths in the... local river!! When we mentioned that we wanted to go to the Baldi hot springs (the river somehow did not sound too right...), the guy told us that we should not go there because people tend to pee in the water and the pools are quite stagnant!?! and the local river was better. Right. We went to check out a couple of agencies and got a good offer for the hot pee-baths starting 20 minutes later. It was a good pick, we started early with time to hike at the base of the volcano where the 1992 lava field is and even saw some animals on the way - a beautiful toucan and a group of hungry coatis that some cars were feeding.

The coatis

Then they took us to the Arenal Observation Lodge, which is a posh hotel with an observatory and sismograph where the view of the volcano is really excellent. There we stayed till it got dark and were lucky to see a good bit of lava coming out and hear all the spitting and spewing. From there we then got taken to the thermal baths, which were quite good - probably the best ones we have tried in our lives!

Volcán Arenal (1,633 meters) is a picture-perfect cone. It's also Costa Rica's most active volcano and probably on every tourist's itinerary. Arenal was sacred to pre-Columbian tribes (it is easy to imagine sacrifices tossed into the inferno), but it slumbered peacefully throughout the colonial era. On 29 July 1968, it was awakened from its long sleep by a fateful earthquake. The massive explosion that resulted wiped out the villages of Tabacón and Pueblo Nuevo, whose entire populations perished. The blast was felt as far away as Colorado.
Today it is regarded as one of the world's most active volcanoes. Its lava flows pretty much constantly and eruptions, though relatively mild, are continuous.

Arenal by day (the white smoke is smoke, not clouds!)

Arenal by night

The next day we moved on to Monteverde, the most famous cloud forest in Costa Rica. We bought a transport package known as minibus-boat-minibus which entails being transferred from La Fortuna to a boat, crossing Lake Arenal and then continuing by minibus to Monteverde through a very rough road and stunning scenery.

The Arenal surroundings on the way to Monteverde

Baldi hotsprings
[img=http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/69298/baldi_springs_1.jpg

The bus journey from Panama City to San Jose was quite tiring. We chose to travel with Panaline and, although the bus was of a good standard, their seats did not recline enough to allow a good sleep. So we slept little and got to San Jose at 3pm tired and in a bad mood. We landed at JCFriends Hostal, as suggested by our taxi driver, which is somewhere west of the city centre - not really sure about where, as we have not explored San Jose at all during our two-nights stay there. All we did was walk down the road two blocks to the cash point and restaurant and then back to our bathroomless room.

The same day we arrived, we decided to book an excursion with Expediciones Tropicales, which is one of the big agencies here. The idea was to stay a couple of days and visit the Volcan Poas, a coffee finca and other bits and pieces, however, when we started reading about this 4 in 1 combo tour where they take you to see the volcano and 3 other sights all in one day, we thought it may be worth investing some money and save a precious day or two. So we booked the $80 a head all day trip, which would have included a visit to the volcano, the La Paz Waterfall Gardens, arts and crafts shop and coffee plantation visit. Well, the program turned out to be a little different and absolutely worth every penny. First thing we went to see the volcano, which must be seen in the morning before the clouds roll in. The weather was terrible and we honestly thought there was no point walking up to the viewpoint - we did anyways and surprise surprise, the clouds were everywhere but above the crater!!! So we managed to get a good look at this active volcano and its huge crater filled with milky turquoise broiling water with the smell of rotten eggs. Quite impressive. On the way back, from the minibus the driver spotted a sloth hanging from a telephone cable, so we all got off and started taking pictures till the sloth realised that he was at the centre of the attention and slowly moved back into the trees. From the volcano we were taken for breakfast to a restaurant with beautiful landscaped gardens and lake. After that, we visited the La Paz waterfall and then from there it was a two-hour drive to the Sarapiqui river, where we were put onto a boat to ´look for caimans´. The boat trip was completely unexpected and worthwhile: we saw a number of caimans and American crocodiles, a few large iguanas, spider monkeys, another sleeping sloth and a few birds. The boat took us to a private area where they had a serpentario, a ranario and a mariposario and where, after visiting all three, we had lunch. While the butterfly farm was fairly pathetic, they had a good few interesting snakes but above all the frogs! They had the frogs in a net garden rather than under glass, which made it so much nicer to look at and photograph them. Tiny red poison dart frogs and black and green dart frogs - there are no golden frogs in Costa Rica - they are highly toxic and absolutely gorgeous. Then it started pouring down but by then it was time to head back to San Jose. Absolutely great day, amazing what money can buy....

So far, our impression of Costa Rica is very positive. It is all true, the country is fully geared up for tourism - the excursion today and the countless ministry of tourism posters in our simple hostel proves that they are extremely serious about it. ´More than a country, a commitment to the world´ - how strong is that!!!
Everywhere there are signs of properties with butterfly farms, trout farms, coffee tasting, canopy lines. Yes, it is very touristy, but no wonder! It is an impressively LUSH country, a country of volcanos, rainforests, cloud forests, abundant wildlife and beaches. The Costa Rican Nation has 185 years of independent life and democracy and is known worldwide for its political stability, in sharp contrast to the brutal conflicts and poverty that have affected most of the rest of Central America. It also has no standing army since 1948 - a smart country that has focused its interest and resources to the development of education, health and environmental sustainability and awareness. Our guide today mentioned that 100% of the energy in Costa Rica is renewable, the majority coming from idroelectrical plants, then wind, then thermic and finally biomass. Now, that deserves a lot of respect!!

VOLCAN POAS

La Paz waterfall

Starting our Sarapiqui safari

The most talked-about snake in Central America, the fer-de-lance, much feared for its aggressiveness and lethal venom.

Black and green dart frog

Blue-jeans dart frog - this one must have washed them too much... most of these frogs have really noticeable dark blue legs and waist, quite funny

SLOTH on the Wire