Tag Archives: Costa Rica

Days 26 to 29 – Tranquilised

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Thursday 16 to Sunday 19 March 2023 – I’ve been pretty quiet on these pages for a couple of days now. But all good things must come to an end. We have been at the exquisite Tranquilo Lodge for four days and it’s exactly the break from relentless tourism that we required. We have been so lazy we have been getting fan mail from sloths.

Well, there were a couple of exceptions. Principally, we went snorkelling a couple of days ago.

Caño Island is a nature reserve quite close to Drake Bay, and is a very popular snorkelling destination because of its coral reefs and sea life. Jane had made sure that this was included in the schedule that Pura Aventura had put together for us.

I have strong reservations about going snorkelling. I’m not a strong swimmer, and my previous (limited) experience doesn’t enable me to look forward to doing it again with anything other than grave suspicion,

Anyway, we set off.  Early, of course.  After all, we’re on holiday travelling.  Sebastien had arranged a breakfast box for us, so at least we had a pretty decent stab at a meal having got up at 5am.  At the appointed hour – 0645 – we walked down to the Lodge’s office, where a juvenile hawk of some sort watched us with some bafflement.

Sebastien appeared, provided us with towels and led us (a couple of chaps also staying at the Lodge, Jean-Pierre and Matthew, were part of this excursion as well as Jane and me) down the road to Pirate Cove where we were joined by a German gentleman, Rainer, and spent a little time waiting for the guy who was going to lead the snorkelling, Federico, to marshal his forces. Once things were ready we walked across the beach to where we were to board the boat.  Well, everyone else did. I managed to slip and fall into a stream which ran across the beach, and of course the towels went in as well as me. So they were going to be no use for the rest of the day.

Same like me, really.

Federico was clearly an experienced guide and snorkelling leader, as he gave us clear instructions as to how we were going to get on board and where we were to sit.  He made sure we put on life jackets and off we went, via another beach to pick up a French Canadian family who were also part of the activity.

Off we went, on a 45-minute ride to the island. We got to the first of the two snorkelling stops, and once again Federico gave us clear instructions about how he would lead the group, and what to do in the water, such as how to signal that you were drowning or whatever. And into the water we went, in my case bearing an Olympus Tough camera with which to photograph the bewildering plethora of wildlife that I was sure would be there for me to see.

I discovered, as I had feared, that the normal laws of physics which enable people to enjoy bobbing around in the water with masks, tubes and flippers on simply don’t apply anywhere near me.  The idea is that everyone should stay as a group, and Federico would tell us what we could see. I find that I can either stay with the group or take a look at what’s going on under the water. But not both at the same time.

The nadir of the experience came when Federico told me that there was a turtle to my right, but I had great difficulty knowing where to look.  In fact the bloody thing bumped into me to try to attract my attention, I think.  I managed to get a shot of it as it buggered off

but that was enough for me. I realised that I couldn’t stay with the group, I was having great difficulty seeing anything, so my best place would be on board rather than slowing things down for everyone else. So I used one of the gestures that Federico had taught us meant I needed retrieving and the boat came over to get me. Even that was embarrassing, as I couldn’t get my fucking flippers off and they had to help me with that.

After about 45 minutes, the swimmers came back on board and we went to the island’s beach, where there’s a Rangers’ Station

and a short trail

which leads past convenient conveniences up to a viewing platform.  It was actually a pretty decent view.

Sea Leopard is the farthermost boat

After a few minutes, it was time to board again, but there were lots of boats with groups of punters and so it was a bit chaotic as everyone juggled for a place in the queue to come in.

but then we were off to board the boat (that’s Federico leading the charge).

I (obvs) decided not to participate in the second snorkelling session, but Federico got everyone else organised with his usual clarity and humour.

I will let Jane take up the narrative at this point…

OK so first off, I should have thought to take Steve’s camera on the second session; but I didn’t so I can’t show you what I saw. I have included stock pictures of the main fish we encountered, though, to give you an idea…

My main problem with snorkelling is keeping my mask from fogging up (I have my own mask with prescription lenses, to allow me to actually see without risking my normal contact lenses). There are as many proposed solutions to this problem as there are snorkellers: specific anti-fog sprays, baby shampoo, dish soap, spit… Federico proffered “Monkey Spit” – a bright green biodegradable soap solution of some kind, which actually worked pretty well, and then it was off into the water.

I enjoy the peacefulness of snorkelling, the sensation of flying, the sound of my own breathing; it has to be said that keeping in a group with other snorkellers, including a couple of charming but excitable kids liable to suddenly kick off in any direction, is maybe not quite as peaceful as I’d like, but anyway… We followed Federico over the coral and rocks, about 2m deep on the first session; tbh the visibility was not perfect but the second session, after the stopover on the Island, was much better (and a little deeper).

We were swimming through shoals of Sergeant Major fish, their gold stripes flashing and shining in the sun, and Scissortail Damselfish curious enough to get close to check us out.

Panamic Sergeant Major Fish
Scissortail Damselfish

Hiding in the coral were shy Guineafowl puffers, black spotted, yellow and half-and half; and blue Parrotfish gnawing away at the coral with their sharp beaks at one end, and excreting a stream of fine coral sand at the other.

Guineafowl Puffer (yellow morph)
Guineafowl Puffer (black morph)
Blue-barred Parrotfish

Garden eels, lobsters, starfish… a grazing sea turtle… From time to time Federico free-dived very elegantly down to show us things of interest on the bottom.

Juvenile Rainbow Wrasse
King Angelfish
Garden eel

Despite a few minor stings from jellyfish it was all entirely delightful – but the best sight of all came towards the end. We came upon a massive shoal of Bigeye Crevalle Jack; these are fairly large fish, maybe 50cms long; in the stock picture I’ve included below they are silver when seen from the side, but when seen from above, as we were seeing them, they were an almost translucent pale dove-grey-blue. There were thousands of them, it was a living blue-grey river, flowing, branching, recombining, swirling – a mesmerising and magical sight.

Bigeye Crevalle Jack

And now back to Steve…

The return journey was, unsurprisingly, the reverse of the way out, a 45-minute (more bumpy) ride back to Drake Bay through occasional rain showers. (I took note of the skipper putting his rain jacket on and so followed suit – well, jacket – with alacrity.)

And that was our snorkelling expedition. We relapsed back into total relaxation with only one other brief flurry of activity, when we took a short boat ride out into the bay to see a phenomenon that neither of us had witnessed before – bioluminescence. The conditions, remarkably, were right – low tide and new moon. Our guide was called Abraham (a cousin of our barman Gonzalo (qv) as it turns out) and he took Jane and me and one other couple who were staying at the hotel, Sumi and Raj away from the shore and the lights of the village.  Jane and Raj went into the water (I know my limitations, so steered well clear of that prospect) and had a close-up view of the blue pinpricks of light emitted by the plankton as they moved arms and legs in the water.  The plankton emit light when stressed, Sumi and I splashed our hands in the water and were rewarded by seeing the light emitted by individual plankton swirling around our hands.  I of course tried to photograph it, but there was not enough light and so all I have for it is a series of black frames.  It was intriguing to see the phenomenon at work, though.

Those two activities aside, our time here has been spent in blissful idleness with more than a hint of overindulgence.  Tranquilo Lodge is good at that.

Sebastien and Christophe sold their very successful catering business in San Francisco and have come to Drake Bay to create an absolute jewel – modest in scale currently but with some plans for future expansion.  There are nine villas, each with rooms that are large, comfortable and very well thought-out. The attention to detail is impressive, the service is impeccable (in a relaxed and approachable kind of way) and the food is Michelin-star quality, courtesy of head chef Danny. Much of the food is home produced – they make their own bread, take fruits and vegetables from the gardens and get fish from local sources.  They even make their own honey – here is Sebastien proudly showing the latest batch.

Behind the bar is Gonzalo, who does a great job of making the sort of cocktails that Jane loves,

there’s a cat which appears to have adopted the place as his home

and there are many comforting conformations that the place simply oozes class.

I only have one complaint.  The route from our villa to the bar is really quite steep.

The restaurant and bar area is at the top of steep hill

but in extremis (e.g. with luggage) there’s a lovely new golf buggy, of which Sebastien is justly proud.

We have to leave tomorrow, which is a bit sad, but which will be good for our waistlines: we normally tend to eat just two meals a day, but Sebastien and Christophe do a good line in selling us on a third. Given the quality of the food, it’s difficult – OK, thus far, almost impossible – to resist.

We have one more destination on our schedule, Heredia, back in the centre of the country near San José. We fly there tomorrow, so please come back and find out how that all went, won’t you?

 

Day 25 – Final flights of Angel’s and more (sodden) wildlife

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Wednesday 15 March 2023 – Against all my expectations, the night in the bunks proved to be a great deal less unpleasant than I had been expecting. OK, the occasional disturbance came as someone used a flashlight to see themselves to the loo, and for about an hour there was a very annoying snorer in, I think, the neighbouring bunk. But, that aside, both Jane and I awoke feeling, if not fully refreshed, then at least not completely enervated by the whole business. Whilst I’d been backing up photos at lunchtime yesterday, Jane had attempted a nap and said that the bunk area was very hot; but by the night, it was a tolerable temperature – although no bedclothes were needed.

So, up at 0430, and ready to leave at 0500 with Angel. We were, unsurprisingly, not the only ones embarking on an outing, and the soundtrack as everyone got ready was supplemented by Howler Monkeys in the nearby trees.

Almost immediately we were on to something; the news spread that there was an actual Tapir to be seen, a juvenile Tapir crossing one of the rivers. Angel got us there in time to see it emerge from the waters.

Then, just as I was preparing to take some video

the Tapir shot off into the forest – spooked, we think, by a crocodile nearby. (The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted the croc beside the log in the first two photos above.)

Remarkably, the general excitement of actually seeing an actual Tapir (not that we were that fussed, as we’d seen loads of them, well, four, anyway, a couple of weeks before) was exceeded shortly after, since there was an adult still feeding nearby. My first view of it wasn’t all that encouraging, photographically speaking

(usual problem – vegetation getting in the way), but there were some people really quite close (you can see them in the background here)

and so I was able to scurry round and join one of those “blimey, here’s something interesting” groups of punters all trying to get their photos. Everyone – even the French guys – kept really quiet, and the animal seemed completely unconcerned.

I even managed some video.

Not that we were desperate to see another Tapir (hah! hark at us!), but it was quite something to have one grazing so close by. Later on, since we’re talking Tapirs here, we saw this:

evidence that Tapirs also strip and eat the bark off some trees.

We headed off to the shore once again, where we saw a Tiger Heron,

which stubbornly refused to turn to face us so we could more clearly see the stripes that give it its name, and also a Tricoloured Heron

which (of course) had buggered off before I got to see it, but Angel captured this shot for us on Jane’s phone.

One of the things we really wanted to get was a properly framed photo of a Scarlet Macaw. Angel obligingly found a tree where a couple were perched. The higher one was hiding behind a twig, and just as I found the lower one, it decided to leave, so all I got was this.

We’ve seen (and heard!) plenty of Scarlet Macaws, but still haven’t nailed the perfect portrait.

The only other thing we saw during the morning was a female Curassow

but generally the early morning start had been rewarding for our time of communion with a Tapir. So – breakfast time, and we had to “check out” of the Rangers’ Station, meaning clear any of our stuff from the sleeping area. We kept the wellies and the lockers until it was time to leave, thank goodness.

The breakfast break gave us a couple of photo opportunities. The first was the array of guides’ spotter scopes, looking highly reminiscent of walking palm trees.

The second was a chance sighting – at distance, as it crossed what used to be the airstrip – of a creature I’d never heard of:

a Tayra. If you see one, you can weaselly see that it’s stoatally different from anything we might see in the UK.

Thank you. Thank you for listening to one of the oldest known jokes in the English Language.

So, everyone set out again on the last of the guided tours associated with an overnight in La Sirena.

We came across a pool with a couple of groups looking at something. This was another “need the guides to spot the creature” scene. Your task, should you accept it, is to spot the wildlife in either of these scenes.

Here they are: two caiman.

How do these guys spot this stuff?

The next major encounter was one of my (many) sources of photographic frustration. We had the perfect vantage point to see a troop of Squirrel Monkeys as they went by. Jane captured this video (which appears to show one of the monkeys plummeting ground-wards at the very end – but apparently they are so light that such falls are unlikely to hurt them)

(the clicking sound you can hear in this video is me trying to get a decent shot) and what I came away with was this shot of mother and baby.

My frustration? I was so excited about actually being able to see them (rather than just seeing the foliage thrashing about) that I forgot to check which end I was at of my zoom lens. Of course, I was at the wrong end. If I’d been paying proper attention to the photography, I’d have got some closer and better images. Ho, hum.

Actually, the rest of the morning was fairly quiet, photographically speaking. It was also hot (I estimate at least 30°C, but then I might be exaggerating, here) and very, very, very, humid. My favoured clothing for this kind of activity comes from Rohan, and the shirts (all right, officer, I’ll come clean, shirt) I’d been wearing for the preceding days had been brilliant at wicking away the perspiration that pores out of me at these temperatures. But this particular morning was too humid and the general sweatiness of the whole thing was getting to me.

However.

Once again, the guide-being-able-to-spot-stuff thing gave us a fascinating several minutes. If you don’t like snakes, look away now.

This was a Tropical Bird-eating Snake, some two-and-a-half metres long (a guess, I didn’t ask it).

and it was doing some very snaky things in its search for, I guess, birds to eat. I’ve cobbled together some video that Jane, Angel and his scope and I took.

Altogether very fascinating, and we spent quite a bit of time watching this creature being both sinister and spellbinding.

As we trudged along in an increasingly sodden state, I did take a couple of shots of further sylvan boskiness.

We were grateful for the Rangers’ work using local materials to create steps to help us poor stumbling, sweaty punters through the muddy bits.

We saw a few more creatures worth noting as we headed back to the Rangers’ Station:

Female Slaty-tailed Trogon

A blind rat – amazing it has survived
A Blue-crowned Manakin

and we did see the busiest Leaf Cutter Ant trail <Clarkson mode ON> in the world <Clarkson mode OFF> (and this is actual speed, not speeded up)

and then we arrived back at the Rangers’ Station, where people were preparing to leave to catch a boat to wherever.

We walked to the reception point where we’d signed in, blimey, was it only yesterday? and there was a lot of milling about as we waited for about an hour for our group to be called.

Eventually it was our turn to walk along the beach

to re-run the Dunkirk thing again.

Our boat journey was not back to our original embarkation point, but on to Drake Bay, where we were assured that lunch was awaiting us. We were given instructions to follow a chap in red shorts who would lead us to the restaurant, which was good in theory, but he was a sprightly young thing who leapt off up the not-inconsiderable slope of the track to this restaurant, not giving a fig for his rôle as interim tour guide, and leaving us weary, sweaty punters well in his wake. Bastard. Anyway, we found the restaurant, and had a hasty lunch and eventually a “taxi” (4×4 pickup truck, thankfully with our suitcases from El Remanso on board) arrived to take us – along roads that reminded us uncomfortably of the Nicoya Peninsula – to our next stop.

Our next stop was a place called Tranquilo Lodge. After a bit of working out where the actual entrance was, we got a very pleasant insight into what awaited us. Bear in mind that we were both tired, hot and (in my case appallingly) sweaty after an intense 36 hours in the Corcovado National Park; bear also in mind that the place styles itself Corcovado’s Best Hotel; so the delightful welcome we got from Christophe and Sebastien, who own and run Tranquilo, really lifted our spirits as well as us and our baggage. The route to our room was up a very steep hill and we got a ride in Tranquilo’s lovely new golf buggy and Sebastien explained how everything worked and suggested that we should come to the bar to watch the sunset over a glass of something. He also provided some exceedingly important resources

so we were able to settle in to our room, with its splendid deck

before heading up for that sundowner.

We have four whole days here, with practically nothing to do except decompress. The last 48 hours have been wonderful (cold shower excepted); the four weeks that preceded it have been excellent; but it’s now time for us to relax and enjoy what looks like splendid accommodation.

I shall rhapsodise about Tranquilo in a future post. But, because there’s not a lot on our agenda for the next four days, I don’t know when I shall pen further deathless prose for your enjoyment. Check back in in a few days and see how things develop, won’t you?

Day 24, Part 3 – Second flight of Angel’s

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Tuesday 14 March 2023, 1400 – I took the opportunity during our 90-minute lunchbreak to back up the photos we’d taken that morning and to recharge phone and camera in preparation for whatever wonders the afternoon had in store.

Almost immediately we hit the forest, Angel did his stop-and-point thing and even I managed fairly quickly to see what it was he was indicating – a Lineated Woodpecker. And the resulting image demonstrates elegantly why I always recommend to photographers that they shoot in RAW. If you shoot just JPEG, you’ll get something like this:

But with the extra detail available in a RAW image, you can get this:

We came across a Tinamou nest and its beautifully-coloured eggs –

I’m amazed that a coatimundi or peccary hadn’t made a meal out of it, frankly – and we saw a couple of Crested Guan at fairly close quarters, entirely unfazed by groups of punters, which meant they sat still for their close-ups, thus saving me some angst just in case I needed some for later.

We saw something new – a Scarlet-rumped Cacique (female, unfortunately – the male has wonderful orange decoration around the eyes, apparently) –

and something not new – a three-toed sloth, which Jane swears is smiling

but I’m buggered if I can see that. Never mind.

Then things got quite a lot more interesting quite quickly. The first sight was of the fourth kind of Monkey found in Costa Rica, the Squirrel Monkey. We’ve seen Howlers and Capucin and Spider Monkeys; and we’d seen in the distance the movements in the trees that signified Squirrel Monkeys coming through. But I finally got a clear sight of one of these small creatures (only about 25cm from head to bum) and I almost got a sharp photo, too.

Then The Word Got Out of something important to see and we scurried off in the direction indicated and – lo and behold! –

I got my Anteater shot, after all. I even got some video of it, too.

It had breached a termites’ nest and the termites were understandably less than happy about that so they went after it. This is why it is scratching and trying to use the tree to rub the attackers off.

Soon after that, I got my very first Potoo. OK, it was only a Common Potoo, but I’d never seen one before, so it wasn’t common for me.

This was another demonstration of the value of a long lens and a big sensor, as I was using, as opposed to a phone-and-scope setup. Angel managed to get this shot on Jane’s phone:

slightly larger, yes, but with chromatic aberration defects to detract from the overall quality.

We got another demonstration of the skill of guides. There are two birds in this scene, and I couldn’t see them for ages.

Yes, there they are:

male and female Yellow-Crested Night Herons.

We followed the river to the shore, where a Urania Fulgens moth obligingly stopped for a rest so I could take a photo;

and the beach had a dead tree on it with an extraordinary root system.

We saw Black Hawk Up,

and, as we neared the Ranger Station at the end of our tour, a Costa Rica take on the Monkey Puzzle Tree.

It was, in the end, a very satisfying day, despite the frustrations I felt at points along the way about my inability to (a) see things and (b) get photos of them.

Once back at the station, we had a shower. It was a cold shower. Jane reckons that that was exactly what she needed after five and a half hours and seven and a half miles in the sweaty forest. I reckoned it was fucking torture, and something I never want to do again.

Dinner was served from 6pm and we took the opportunity to go early, mainly because – guess what? – tomorrow’s start would be an early one. The facilities at the station are basic but well-organised; Jane got the top bunk and I got the bottom bunk, and we settled down for what we expected to be a poor night’s sleep, given that there are several other people in bunks in the same area

and we had to be up and ready to go out at 0500 the next day.

The next exciting episode will cover the night’s sleep and the following day’s action-packed, erm, action – come back in a day or so to find out how it all panned out.