While turtles are cool, I was less interested in sitting on a beach at midnight hoping to see a turtle (it’s not the right season anyway), than I was in seeing some of Tortuguero National Park, and the town of Tortuguero itself. And getting there is, in this case, over half the fun. You see, there are no roads to get there, and none when you arrive. Instead, you travel by water – over 80 km through a series of canals, rivers, swamps, narrow passages completely covered by canopy, and spots so shallow that occasionally people have to get out and push the boat over a sand bar. Given the sorts of critters that live in the murky waters, I was not too excited by this last part, but all in all, the rest sounded pretty good, so off we went.
It’s funny how a scene will trigger a memory of a song, and then the song will run around your head for a few minutes, or hours, or days. Dianne saw this
And had the theme from Gilligan’s Island in her head until we got home. The actual boat was only slightly better, pictured here.
It had a sort of “African Queen” look about it, and I half expected Humphrey Bogart to be driving, but it turns out the actual driver was far more personable, and had an excellent eye for critters, so he would stop the boat for people to take pictures if something interesting was sitting on the shore.
I saw this fellow on a sand bar, and then had Gerry Reed’s “Amos Moses” stuck in my head for the weekend. (We really need to update our music collection)
The town of Tortuguero has electricity, water, and even an internet café, but it has no streets since there are no vehicles. Instead there are paths – a wide main one with the entrance to the National Park at one end and the turtle research facility on the other, and several shops, restaurants, bed & breakfast places, etc., in between. An open area in the center of town serves as a park, with this rusting collection of machinery attempting to serve as a reminder of the challenges of building the canals.
For us, though, the highlight of the trip was an early morning canoe trip into the park with Castor Hunter. He’s a guide with a lot of experience and the most amazing ability to pick out birds and animals that we would have paddled by - never knowing they existed.
His canoe is a little larger than ours, seating maybe 8 people, but he paddled it comfortably and we got to watch in amazement as we wandered through twists and turns, each corner exposing new plants and animals and birds, too numerous to list. Considering he had lead a group turtle watching to all hours of the night (it’s illegal to be on the beach without a guide after dark), and we started out at 5:45 AM, he did an amazing job.
We were back in time to grab our stuff, a little food, and the 10:00 AM boat back to Moin. From there, a taxi to Limon, and the bus to Cahuita – and we were back at the cabina to shower and nurse sore butts after 12 hours of mostly sitting on less than comfortable seats of one kind or another. Then we were off to dinner to discuss which incidents will provide blog fodder for the next couple days.
It’s good to be back – chatting with a half dozen folks on our walk from the bus station, and giving directions to some confused tourists that looked as overwhelmed as we were just a few short weeks ago. We are heading into our last week here, and it’s going to be tough to leave.
Here are a few shots from our early morning paddle with Castor:
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