David and Enid's Travels

Rainbow over the cloud forest on the fight to Liberia

Unfortunately our trip is nearly done, so we are on our way home.  We got to the tiny Drake Bay airport, only to find that our suitcases have mysteriously gotten heavier, even though we’ve thrown a few things away.  In any case we had to pay excess weight fees.  Perhaps it is all the humidity since everything in our suitcases is pretty damp (and smelly).

After a short flight to Puerto Jimenez we next went to San Jose.  Here we had to catch a connecting flight to Liberia so we had about an hour layover.  They warned us that the luggage might not get on the plane since it was full; however, fortunately everything arrived with us.

It is very dry in Liberia, and very windy.  This afternoon we went for a short swim in the pool, which was pretty cool compared to the air temperature, then sat on lounge chairs in the sun and read.  We are very close to finishing our books, so it must be time to head home.

I didn’t have the greatest sleep.  Our mattress was not very good, and I could feel the floor under my hips.  At 3 am the people next to us, on both sides, got up to leave (you have to catch the Rio Clara  crossing at low tide) and so we woke.  We did both get back to sleep however and slept until 5 when someone’s alarm clock rang.

Anole displaying his crest

We were planning to get away for an early hike anyway, so this was when we’d planned to get up.  Neyer cooked us coffee, then we went on an early morning hike looking for peccaries (we did spot just one, though we could often smell them along the trail).  We had much greater success with monkeys, as we saw many, many troops of spider monkeys swinging through the tops of the canopy, as well as some howlers, and lots of squirrel monkeys.

The plant growth was amazing, and we were awed by enormous primary rainforest trees towering as much as 50 metres above us. Neyer was an extraordinary guide and his knowledge was so extensive that we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in the park.

After breakfast at about 8 we went out again, once more looking for what animals and plants we could find.  It was already starting to get hot, and although we looked for peccaries at every waterhole, we never did see any more.  That was quite alright however for we did see so much other flora and fauna that we will never remember even a tiny part of the names of what we viewed.

Loading the boats at Sirena

By 12:30 it was time to head back to the beach and catch our boat home.  The tide was out, unlike when we’d landed yesterday morning, and we had to walk out about 100 meters over hard flat rock.  The water was shallow, and very, very warm, almost hot.

A frog on the night hike

This evening we went for a night walk.  This was led by one of the other guides who lives in Drake Bay, but Neyer accompanied us.  We were really glad he did for he spotted many animals that the other guide missed, including the famous red-eyed tree frog. 

Red eyed tree frog

He also saw something very unique, two snakes that were trying to swallow the same frog.  They each had about half a frog in their mouth and we weren’t sure what would happen when they got to the middle.  Would one snake swallow the other?

Owl butterfly

We arose early to eat breakfast at 5:15 in order to be on the boat to Corcavado National Park, which is about an hour south of Drake Bay on the ocean.  Together with a number of other guests from Cabinas Manolo we hopped onto the back of the truck for a ride to the beach.  There we waded out to our boat, and after picking up another couple of people at another spot on the beach we were underway.

Our guide for the next two days, Neyer, unloaded the cooler containing our breakfast for tomorrow, and we carried our backpacks with today’s lunch, some snacks and our clothes to Sirena Station which was about a kilometer from where we’d landed on the beach.  Along the way Neyer pointed out many of the plants and animals along the path.

As we arrived at the grassy clearing which is where the buildings for Sirena Station are located, a small plane buzzed right over our heads, and landed on the “air strip” (calling it an air strip is stretching the truth as it is two dirt ruts through the tall grass).  “He’s crazy,” Neyer said of the pilot.  Apart from the boat, the only other ways to get here are by walking about 20 km, or by taking this small plane from Puerto Jimenez.

After leaving our overnight supplies where we would be sleeping for the night, we headed off on a hike.  We could hear the howler monkeys roaring not far away.  We soon spotted some spider monkeys.  It was information overload as Neyer pointed out to us all the many species of flora and fauna along our walk.

We stopped at the Rio Claro to eat our lunch. It was a very pleasant shady spot with a nice breeze that cooled us from the 30C heat and humidity of the morning.  After lunch Neyer walked to try and find some tapirs, but wasn’t able to see any.  After enjoying the break, while he told us much of the biology of the forest, and seeing some of the birds including a pair of scarlet macaws, we continued on the trail.

Not long after that we spotted two hikers fording the river.  We talked to them as they dried their feet, while Neyer walked back across the river to once again look for tapirs.  We found that the hikers were from Israel, and suddenly one of them exclaimed that he saw something.  We looked and saw a tapir a couple of hundred meters towards the ocean, so we quickly walked that direction..  After looking around a bit we were able to get quite close to it as it ate the leaves of the hyacinths and grasses.

After we’d met up with Neyer once more we looked some more, but didn’t spot any further tapirs.  However we did see literally hundreds of kinds of birds as we walked back to the station.

Enid was tired, so didn’t continue with us as Neyer and I walked to the ocean to see if we could spot a bull shark as it entered the mouth of the river at high tide.  We were unsuccessful, but did see a number of monkeys preparing to rest for the night in the tops of the trees.

It was almost dusk by the time we got back to the station so Enid and I set up our tent for the night, along with more than 25 other campers under the roof of a large open building.  We found a dirty old foam mattress, but it was the only one thick enough to give some comfort on the hard floor.  We set it up in one tent, but when I went inside decided it would be much too hot.  This tent had only a tiny screened door, so very poor ventilation.  We found a much better tent and got our tent set up in time for supper.

The showers there weren’t very clean, and the three toilets were filthy by the end of the evening.  We were very careful to make sure we used a lot of hand sanitizer, and I also doubled the water treatment for our drinking water.  Supper for us was provided by the station personell.  Their kitchen looked a lot cleaner than the one where many of the other campers were preparing their own food, so we hoped that the food would be safe.

We were both very tired so we fell asleep pretty quickly.  The lights went off at 8 pm, and then it quieted down very quickly.

Heron at the start of our trip

We had a great deal of difficulty arranging a tour to the Sierpe River mangroves today.  The hostel at which we are staying would only do the tour for a minimum of five, and no-one else here seemed to want to do it.  However, they were able to arrange it through another hotel, so at seven this morning we piled into the back of a one ton truck with a bunch of others  (they were going to the beach as well, but to catch a boat to take and leave them at the town of Puerto Sierpe).

Our boat showed up about 15 minutes after we’d arrived, but when they tried to land in the surf caught a wave and took on water.  So they circled around through the bay while they emptied the water before trying (and succeeding) to pick us up on their second attempt.

We went back to their hotel where we picked up six  fellow tourists and our guide, and then took a brief tour up the river by their hotel where we saw a number of different kinds of herons.a

Then we were off for a fifteen  minute ride across the ocean.  It was quite smooth, except where we had to cross the surf at the mouth of the river.  Here they had us put on lifejackets, and then the boat driver surfed us in excellently.

Squirrel monkey

We saw many shorebirds — herons, egrets,  whimbrels — eating crabs on a mudflat near the mouth of the river as it was low tide.  Later on during the tour we saw many other birds, several troops of spider monkeys, a large american crocodile sunning itself on the bank, and another swimming in the river.  Later on we saw some long nosed bats, and a spectacled caiman.  We also saw a lot of iguanas.

A boat on the Sierpe Riverr

We stopped for a break in the town of Puerto Sierpe.  In the town square they have huge round stone ball about four feet high.  No one seems to know the origin of these, but apparently there are many smaller ones, and another large one in this area.

On the way back we were hunting for a sloth since the other tourists wanted to see one.  Finally we found one high in a tree, and then we headed back at high speed.  As we crossed the surf we headed at full tilt between two large rocks.  It didn’t look very good with the breaking surf, but it was surprisingly flat white water between them.

The other tourists were surprised at how we got out of the boat when we got back to the beach.  They have a well made floating dock at their high class hotel in a sheltered cove. We just hopped out into the surf with our shorts rolled up as high as possible. Though we are now used to this method, they hadn’t seen it done before.  The boats back in to the sand, watch for and ride in on an incoming wave that is not too large,  raise their motor at the last minute, and then you hop out.

Tomorrow morning it will be an early start as we head to Sirena Station for our night in the jungle.

Snorkel tour boat

We had an early breakfast in order to leave on the boat at 7:15 for our snorkeling tour to Caño Island.  We wondered how they were going to get all the people on the boat, and they weren’t.  We were asked to go on a differerent boat, and at first we were annoyed because it was a dive boat, and we thought we might have to wait for the divers to snorkel.

But as it turned out it was a good day.  Because there were less people snorkeling on our boat we had less interference and were able to get in two good sessions.  As well on the way to the island we saw a lot of spotted dolphins feeding.

Small reef fish

In the first session we saw a lot of small fish, especially a lot of Sergeant Majors.  We also did see a large green sea turtle, and a white tipped  reef shark, and quite a lot of red snapper.

After that we went on shore for a while, and some people that didn’t want to snorkel stayed behind to walk on the island.  We did see some tourists that had an unfortunate experience.  An older couple than us, the man must have fallen getting off the boat, as he was soaked, but worse, so was his entire pack that he was carrying, including at least two cameras.  One was a point and shoot, but the other was a quality camera with a second telephoto lens.  We saw them trying to clean them off, but from my experience with cameras and water they had a really disastrous experience.

Schooling Jack

For the second snorkeling session only three of us went out.  After we’d dropped the divers our guide took us towards shore, and we swam for a long way, but it was too deep to see anything.  So he had the boat pick us up and took us to a shallower spot where we saw a lot of fish.  Most interesting was a huge school of jack.  There were thousands of schooling fish milling below us.  We also saw a lot of smaller reef fish.

There is virtually no coral here, and the water is not very clear.  Because it is so deep it isn’t the best snorkeling we’ve done, but there certainly were a huge number of fish.  I managed to get the tops of my toes badly blistered in the fins.  I guess they were rubbing on the top, or perhaps I got some sand in the boots.

After finishing snorkeling we headed in to a beach on the Osa peninsula.  It was a beautiful beach, and we ate lunch there before returning to the hote.