2018/02 Costa Rica - Corcovado Jungle |
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Wednesday February 28th
Our last full day was going to be spent in nearby Corcovado national park. At breakfast Manfred asked if we’d felt the earthquake, a four point something he guessed, occurring at about 5 am. We hadn’t but have no reason to doubt him. The De Osa area had a 4.9 just before we arrived and another 4.9 the day after we left.
We had the English couple and Manfred, and George and Linda from New York State on the trip; our guide was Toni. Corcovado is only accessible by boat, about a half hour trip around the peninsula. We had another wet landing, this time in medium waves.
We landed at the San Pedrillo ranger station, where we had to sign in with sexes and ages. I looked back in the book and couldn’t find
any other 70s. Not a good sign!
The first walk was a loop through the forest just behind the beach, looking for birds and bugs and lizards. Toni had his spotting scope along and, like Diego, he found some amazing stuff which we couldn’t find without the scope. He found a sloth for 
us, but admitted it was hard for us to see, just an arm wrapped around a tree trunk with the rest of the sloth hidden behind it.
The trail crossed many streams so we had plenty of mud to negotiate, greasy roots too. Toni did his best to keep us upright. We found dragonflies, bats, spiders and a few birds and the composite below shows the few that we managed to capture with the camera. The bird is a kiskadee. Bottom right is a baby turtle that didn’t make it out of the nest.
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Corcovado walk (3.50) |
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Bottom left is a sad remnant of a sloth. The sloth lives safely in its tree for about 8 days until it needs to take a dump, when it climbs down, sees to business, digs a hole amongst the tree’s roots, and hides it before climbing back up. This sloth was found by a puma, the Costa Rican’s name for a cougar, and it got eaten, leaving just the skull and some hair. Either bad luck or the puma had marked its calendar. 
The jungle was a wild tangle of green, but there were a few interesting flowers and fruits. These orchids were growing on a tree trunk, high above our heads. The cashews were probably a remnant from the farm that preceded the park. The dangling white flowers are fragrant frangipani and the woolly fruit is kapok, once farmed to provide filling for insulated jackets and since replaced by synthetics.
We returned to the station via the beach and Toni served up a very welcome fruit snack of pineapple and water melon that fortified us for the 
next hike. The challenges of keeping the station together were apparent: the termite nest in the roof, the shattered rafters above our heads, and the wasp nest just above our picnic table.
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Waterfall walk (4.18) |
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Our second trail hugged the riverbank, climbing up root systems to get around trees and down to planks to cross streams, and ended at a tall waterfall. 
On our way up we’d spotted this crocodile amongst logs and branches. 
The other picture shows the terrain; Gill crossing with Toni’s help.
Some of us ended the trip with a very refreshing swim below the falls; too far upriver for crocodiles we were told. It was a pretty spot. 
On our way back down we saw the croc again, or maybe another in the same area.
. Back at the beach we saw this log floating in the shallows.
We ate a great lunch served up by Toni and then we had a short wait for our pickup boat to arrive. 
We were entertained by this great-tailed grackle, just as noisy and active as its cousins we used to have in our bird house back in Minnesota. 
Then we noticed that our log was moving around in the shallows and was now showing its impressive teeth.
Wading out to our pickup boat was a brief affair – no one dallied!