Day 2 was an early start so that we could leave San Jose before the morning traffic. The Police seemed to have every road out of San Jose blocked and they were stopping cars and trucks. We saw them stopping an illegal taxi driver and were told that his car licence plate would be removed and he only got it back after paying his fine. Our guide’s comment was ” the police making everyone’s day miserable” as it seems that the Costa Rican public like using the illegal taxis as they are much cheaper even than Uber.
After taking breakfast on the way to catching the boat we arrived the embarkation point which was a lot busier than we expected and were greeted with the following sign:
We boarded the boat 40 minutes later and left for the 1 hour trip to Tortuguero. The river was very low even though the wet season was just finishing so the driver had to drive carefully to make sure he was in the channel and to avoid going aground. We saw a caiman (small crocodile) on the way sunning itself on the river bank and a few vultures and arrived at the Mawamba Lodge in time for lunch.
After lunch we were going for a walk down the beach to Tortuguero village and ran into one of the Lodge’s resident large male green Iguanas:
These Iguanas are good climbers and swimmers and we saw many of them in the trees. The female is much smaller and a dark grey colour.
The main street of Tortuguero village was not very long but was much more commercialise than we expected. On the way we visited the Sea Turtle Conservancy which was set up in the 1950’s by an American, Dr Archie Carr, to stop the locals killing the green, hawksbill, loggerhead and leatherback turtles that lay their eggs on Tortuguero beach. It seems to be working through an education programme which also uses the young locals to act a tour guides when the turtles are on the beach laying their eggs between July and October. We were just too late to see any hatching turtles but the remains of the nests were evident on the beach.
Day 3 we took 2 boat trips into the Tortuguero National Park wildlife spotting. As we are in the rain forest, it decided to rain heavily on our first boat trip which, although not pleasant for us, did not put off the wildlife. We were lucky enough to see all three types of monkeys, Howler, Spider and White Throated Capuchin as well as many birds including the Scarlet and Great Green Macaw. We also saw many more Caiman, a 3 toed Sloth and fresh water turtles. When we got back for lunch after the first boat trip, there was even a spider monkey in the bar area of the hotel for good measure,
The Mawamba Lodge also has a butterfly and poisonous frog enclosures where they have the likes of the Great Owl Butterfly and the poisonous, but extremely small (size of a finger nail) red and green Poison Dart frogs. The frogs secrete a poison from their skin so if you ingest even through a cut on your hand, the consequences are dire and can lead to death. The is also a small area they have for the red eye tree frog which seems to appear on every holiday brochure for Costa Rica. These were again quite small but very attractive. I will post a picture of one in the next blog.
The Costa Ricans seems to be doing a lot to try and conserve this area by not letting any more people settle here or hotels be built so hopefully this area will continue to support the wildlife even though some species are thought to be endangered.
Tomorrow morning we move on the the Braulio Carrillo National Park.