catching up II – my trip to the Tortuguero National Park
Again I am way behind with my posts. And I can’t believe I haven’t told you about my awesome trip to the Tortuguero National Park on my last day in Costa Rica.
It started really early and I got picked up at the hostel at 6am, driving into a wall of fog. I literally couldn’t see anything while we were crossing through the Braulio Carillo National Park and I was happy the driver obviously did the trip everyday, so he would know the route by heart. Once or twice the fog lifted and we could see dense jungle and huge rivers flowing through the mountains.
Once we passed the mountains and descended into the flatlands, the sun shone and we passed through immense banana and pineapple plantations. Our guides were amazing good spotters and so we got to see a three-toed sloth just having breakfast high up in the trees! He had really long and green fur, covered in algae so you could hardly spot him between the leaves.
On our drive to the boat that would take us through the Tortuguero National Park’s waterways we also got to see a monkey family swinging along the trees, a Jesus Christ lizard as well as a kaiman.
Once on the boat the first thing we saw was a big alligator sliding into the water just a few meters away from us and we were happy to be in our big boat. At first the water was a muddy beige, but the further we moved into the jungle, the darker the water got and when we turned into one of the smaller canals it changed from latte macchiato to black tea. On our boat ride we got to see another few monkeys jumping the tree tops, a massive kaiman showing off his jaws, Jesus Christ lizzards hiding in the greenery and lots of birds and butterflies roaming around. Just when we landed in Tortuguero, the village built on the Caribbean coast to protect nesting turtles, a massive orange lizard was climbing atop a single tree – he was sooo huge and bright you could see him from far away! The village of Tortuguero was colorful and made up for the grey and rough Caribbean coast which was a little bit disappointing as you would imagine it bright blue and calm like always advertised. But seeing all the amazing different wildlife during our trip made well up for it! During lunch it started pouring and all our way back it kept raining so we were really lucky we had seen all these amazing animals on our way here!
It was an amazing last day in Costa Rica and a great way to say goodbye to this amazingly green and lush country filled with so many animals!
