TORTUGUERO
Days 24-26 (31st Jan)
Up at 05.00 to be ready to roll in the hotel foyer for 06.00 pickup by the tour bus. Small day packs only with one change of clothes to last three days in the jungle. We really are getting good at this travelling light lark, which totally confused the bus driver who kept asking where our luggage was.
​
Then off on a four hour drive to Tortuguero, a Caribbean Sea coast rain forest jungle national park up near the Nicaraguan border. Miles and miles of more jungles and then wide open plains of bananas as far as the eye can see before we arrive - at a big car park. There we disembark the bus, and walk 100 paces. I say walk. Well we walk it nonchalantly, backpacks on our shoulders. Everyone else puts their backs out dragging massive cases through deep sand down to a beach by a sluggish brown river which seemed to be missing quite a bit of water.
Here we board small thin boats - for another flipping TWO hours travel, waterborne this time, bumping on the riverbed, getting stuck, just missing big floating trees, basically bouncing along the bottom, and despite being out in a fresh breeze - all forced to wear masks the whole way which was mildly annoying.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Not half as annoying as a sign like that on the left, especially if you are shit scared of snakes! But on the boat we got and sailed bumpily for two hours down the Rio Suerte (Lucky River) before we finally arrive at the waterside Laguna Lodge which is our base for two nights. A lovely wood cabin in stunning gardens.
​
Lovely bar overlooking the lagoon and plenty of local iguanas coming down from the trees to look at the tourists and to earwig on my conversation with our new friend Steve who had the privilege of listening to my pent up weeks of not being able to rant about politics and the world at large. Sara is quite strict on that. No ranting. Poor Steve.
Settle in and then straight off onto another boat back to the local village for a two hour walk around. Lovely picturesque and very scruffy place with bags of charm. As we wandered through Sara mused quietly that she was hoping to see a Toucan but was giving up hope. Overheard by our not only eagle eyed, but also eagle eared, guide Kevin Mcfarlane (for some reason most Costa Rican males have English first names, and very Latin American Kevin even has a Scottish surname, although was strangely unresponsive to my inquiring on his views about Nicola Sturgeon), anyway, he overheard Sara speak about her Toucan dream/obsession.
​
He did no more than point up in the air into the massive and impenetrable tree we were standing under and ask Sara which variety of Toucan she wished to see, and then pointed out two of her faves, right above our heads. We would never have spotted them in a million years, and even with binoculars I still struggled. So that is another cross in our I-Spy book of Costa Rica, Another happy Sara.
​
At this juncture I should mention that Africa it ain't. In Africa it is 'herd of wildebeest', pride of lions', 'bloat of hippos' (yes, really). Here it is - A heron, A frog, A caiman (look it up, I had to) A spider, and in this case A Toucan. Wonderful to see A Toucan, but I was hoping for a durante of Toucans (if you don't believe me, look it up).
On the right is the massive tree, with added Vulture, obviously, no sky here without a wake of vultures in sight (seriously, it's a wake). Spot the Toucan?? No neither did I even with the use of my trusty binos. Finally after much pointing and calling me a blind deaf dick I got the little tinker and managed to point the camera in roughly the right direction to catch a grainy photo of the only one of two toucans we saw in the whole country.
​
Back to base by boat and a wander onto the beach, which was littered with signs warning against even approaching the water due to numerous rip-tide sort of risks, so no tourists joined the multitude of young children in the surf. They must be immune to rip-tides I guess. Totally different sea to the Pacific coast, much wilder and not the cerulean blue we had become accustomed too, so all being equal we obeyed the signs.
.jpg)
The following day we again boarded a boat, I should maybe explain this place is a National Reserve formed around a number of lagoons and rivers and everything is waterborne, no vehicles for flipping miles, no humans on the land disturbing the wildlife.
​
Which as I mentioned before is hardly relevant as there was little of the aforementioned wildlife to disturb. That did not worry Kevin. We sat for four hours in the boat basically looking at rain-forest. Luckily it wasn't raining as well.
​
No matter, in what seemed like no time we were checking out and boarding yet another boat for another two hours back up the Rio Suerte (not so Lucky River), and another four hours bussing back to San Jose. You may get the impression that if we had our time again we may have crossed this one off the list, or maybe we were all 'parked' out. The important part is we had total TOUCAN!
​
Well two toucans to be absolutely accurate. But vultures by the wakeload!!! What is with the bloody things?
.jpg)
.jpg)
Above is a couple of scene setting shots of the lagoons and the local security guard sitting on his log in case A tasty heron (the only heron?) is passing by as a starter for lunch.
​
So back to town and The Dunn Inn, and up at 04.30 for a really early flight to the Yucatan, Cancun airport here we come..........