Tortuguero

Very early in the morning after our first night in San Jose, we boarded a guided van at our hotel, and covered quite a few miles, passing some interesting countryside. We stopped for breakfast at a touristy place at a major crossroads, then drove some more to a riverfront docking place. There we boarded a boat that took us to Tortuguera. on a barrier island on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. The village borders Tortuguero National Park, It is only accessible by boat. The whole area is basically rainforest on a lagoon It’s all stunningly beautiful and we loved it.

Above some scenes from our hotel — beautiful grounds, friendly staff, and delicious food. Before we even deposited our luggage we watched a mother spider monkey and her baby swinging among the trees– no picture, because I was still a bit disoriented from a couple of long travel days and couldn’t even remember how to do it! But an unforgettable memory nonetheless.

The next morning we had booked a guided boat tour of some of the canals bordering Tortuegero National Park (really the whole area is, I think, part of the Park). Our guide and the pilot both knew a lot about native fauna and flora and because we were the only two on the boat we had full advantage of their knowledge.

The boat was capable of gliding quietly into inlets near wetlands and we enjoyed sitting still and watching the water birds and other jungle denizens.

Some we saw were the same species we often see at our Canal Cottage — we’re in a subtropical climate there too. But Costa Rica leans a little more toward the tropical, because .we spotted some very different species, like the one in the picture just below:

I think the caption I gave this guy is correct — but even if it is a different kind of sloth, it is definitely a sloth and definitely a first-ever for us. We saw a few of them from the boat. It was pretty easy to get pictures — they don’t move very fast!

Lots of birds hiding out — our boat was quiet and I don’t think it disturbed them at all.

There were other “swamp creatures” as well– a couple kind of huge lizards and everybody’s favorite (not) reptiles, crocodiles, alligators and caymans. They didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them. Oddly we didn’t spot any turtles, even though the village and national park are named for the sea turtles that make the area their home.

We loved everything about our day on the water, even the crocodiles, but it was nice to be back to our home away from home too.

Because our flight from Eugene had been delayed, we had only the one full day to spend in Tortuguero and we were sorry to have to leave the next morning. But other adventures in this beautiful country awaited.

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