Tag Archives: Costa Rica

Day 11 – La Finca (Arenal) to Tortuguero. Tortuga Lodge, but no turtles

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Wednesday 1 March 2023 – The third early morning on the trot.  We needed to be at an embarcadero, Caño Blanco, at 10am in order to be transferred to Tortuga Lodge, on the east coast of the country.

As you can see from the satellite map above, Tortuga Lodge is inaccessible by road (the only options are boat or air) so our hire car, nice as it was, wouldn’t get us there.  We had to be at the right place at the right time in order not to miss the boat. Hence leaving at 6am for a journey that officially would take three and a quarter hours.

The journey was fundamentally fine.  The roads threw no curve balls to upset the timings, going through pleasant countryside on decent surfaces

until we hit Route 32 .This is the subject of massive, massive roadworks, and it’ll be lovely when it’s finished, but it was a torturous mix of nice surfaces, pothole slaloms and carriageway changes.  By and large the surface is good, but the traffic can be heavy, in two ways: lots of it; and some huge trucks.  It’s obviously an important commercial highway, which is presumably why it’s being upgraded.  The roadworks threw up some oddities,

like the enterprising chap, who had set up his stall in the middle of the roadworks.  But we ground our way on, eventually leaving Route 32 for more pleasant roads, which then turned into dirt roads, albeit with a largely drivable surface.

The driving wasn’t all straightforward. In shady sections such as shown above, one could never be quite sure if a dark patch was a shadow or a crater. My success rate in guessing was over 75%, but our teeth were a little looser by the time we arrived at the embarcadero.

There were some interesting sights on the journey – some lovely orange-flowered trees

and a Crested Caracara having a late breakfast, presumably on roadkill.

The embarcadero is billed on Google Maps as a “tourist attraction”, which is, frankly, actionably false.

What it is is a hub for tourist transfers to and from the various lodges in and around Tortuguero.  We arrived well early, so it was fairly quiet, with only a couple of boats in

but as 10am approached, things began to happen, with incoming boats disgorging tourists and luggage. Eventually, a couple of boats labelled “Tortuga Lodge” turned up

and we gathered hopefully around them, along with a bunch of other people who were also bound thither.

The Lodge experience was described, slightly disparagingly, in our Pura Aventura material as “packaged”, as if that would offend the sensibilities of posh travellers like what we are.  What it is is very well-organised. Juan (chap with sunglasses in the photo above) checked us on his list and gave us labels to put on our bags so that they could be transferred directly to our rooms.  Then he got us to sign the waivers that said we wouldn’t sue if we were killed in some freak accident.

Our bags left before us

and then we were off as well.

It’s worth noting at this point that we weren’t at the usual embarkation point for our destination Lodge, which would have been at La Pavona, some 10 miles away from the Lodge as the crow flies.  However, the river there was apparently too low, hence the change of embarkation point (not just for today, but for the whole season – and I think the other lodges had made that change as well, judging from the comings and goings that morning).  Instead, we had a 22-mile boat journey of over 90 minutes in order to get to the Lodge.

That time wasn’t wasted, though.  Juan used it to give us a thorough briefing and to make some detailed preparations.

We were offered various excursions and could make bookings on those that interested us; and we were offered the lunch menu so that the restaurant at the Lodge would be ready for us on our arrival.  Very smoothly done.

We also saw some wildlife en route, and the boat occasionally slowed and stopped for us to see

a North American Crocodile and

some spider monkeys.  There were also herons and egrets (we had a few, but then again….) and other things that I quite failed to get photos of. The boat spent most of its time at full throttle and I frankly dozed for much of the journey.  Jane took a couple of shots of the scenery as it went by

and also recorded some video as we passed Tortuguero, the main town of the region.

We arrived to a cordial greeting and a fresh fruit juice cocktail from several members of the staff there, and then immediately went through to lunch in the very pleasant dining area,

which I was pleased to note also had what looked like a fully-stocked bar.

The Lodge and Gardens is a pleasant area

and we had a nice (cool!) room, with a colourful veranda, conveniently close to the bar reception and restaurant.

Even though we had no formal wildlife spotting activities planned until later, it was difficult to get away from the creatures that were all around.  There were, of course, the ubiquitous Montezuma’s Oropendolas (more of them in a later post), but there’s at least one large Green Iguana which uses parts of the Lodge as its domain

and we saw a Great Kissadee and a Grackle from our seats on our veranda

and also a young – and definitely green – Green Iguana.

I mentioned that there were organised activities on offer, and the Lodge offers a decent programme of possibilities, all accompanied by a professional guide, which is excellent, as they’re mainly wildlife-focussed. (“Tortuga” means “turtle” in Spanish, and there is often the possibility of turtle action among these activities. But it’s the wrong season right now, so there weren’t any for us.)

The programme details were a bit different from what we’d expected based on Pura Aventura’s materials, but no matter.  We both decided to take a morning boat ride to see local wildlife, and also to do a walk up to the top of a local, nay, the only local, hill.  Those were set for the next day, and you’ll just have to wait to read all about them.

Jane also elected to go on a night walk, while I decided that I was too tired and too much in need of a gin. So while I toiled away in my creative fervour and the bar, Jane went on a humid, bug-ridden but interesting walk with Miguel, “Monkey”, as the guide.

Miguel proved to be every bit as skillful as, probably more so than, Danny, our guide in Arenal.  He spotted tiny poison dart frogs

so called because of the toxins on the skin – natives would wipe their arrows on the frog to make the tips poisonous.  Miguel also spotted a tiny anole lizard,

intricate spiders’ webs,

a Black and White Owl

and also up a tree – believe it or not – a porcupine! He/she/it was directly above, foraging for fruit, so we present you with a most unusual view of the underside of a porcupine!

Miguel’s ability to spot things was uncanny, and born of decades of long practice, building up huge knowledge.  He was actually born in the forest, beside a mahogany tree, and his passion for watching wildlife shines through all the time.  Jane enjoyed the walk, despite the heat, humidity and bugs and despite the pushiness of a German lady in the group who clearly thought that having the biggest camera with the chunkiest lens entitled her to elbow others aside to line up the shot she wanted. (I can understand this, and I do try not to be that type, but I bet I’ve failed a few times over the years.)

After Jane came back from her walk, we went to the restaurant for dinner.  The food and service were excellent, and there was also a bit of cabaret for us, in the shape of a performance from the children of Tortuguero who were learning music as part of the Tortuguero Cultural Collective.

After the kids did their thing, a more conventional cabaret followed and I include a snatch of it which might bring a smile to the face of anyone who knows the name Stan Freberg.

 

A combination of the calypso singing and tiredness drove us back to our room to prepare ourselves for the following day. Which you can read about when you come back tomorrow, OK?  See you then.

Day 10 – La Finca Lodge (Arenal)

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Tuesday 28 February 2023 – Early morning number 2. Such a joy, being on holiday travelling….

Not, I suppose, a ridiculously early morning by many people’s standards, but the alarm went off at 6am so that we could present ourselves in some semblance of good order for a day of relentless tourism starting at 0730.  We were actually just finishing our breakfast, which had a decent aspect on to the property

when a chap came over to say hello.  It turned out that he was Danny, our guide for the day, and he was both a very nice guy and very knowledgeable (although we stumped him with the katydid. Hah! Score one for the tourists!).

Our first objective was the Observatory Lodge in the Arenal Volcano national park (where, you remember, we feared to trust the car tyre tread yesterday). It turned out that there was a route available with a much less hostile road surface, so we followed that, and discovered that the Costa Rican attitude to wildlife and tourists means that it is entirely possible just to stop, get out of the car and look at (and, of course, in my case try to photograph) things. Danny, who was clearly one of the good guides, was adept at spotting things, and so we stopped near a river where he had seen some monkeys in the trees.  It is a mystery to me, particularly given my failing eyesight, how these guys can spot things, but I suppose a child of five can do it with 20 years’ practice. So we just stopped and got out of the car, leaving just enough room for a fucking great truck which came along later to squeeze through. And he pointed out the monkeys.

You can clearly see them in these photos, but it took me several minutes to be able to spot what Danny had seen from a moving vehicle – and I had to wait until they moved before I could make them out. I did get a couple of other shots eventually.)

We also saw something which was characteristic of holiday travelling here.  Rather like that game we might have played as kids (I never did this, officer, honest) where you stand somewhere and point up at, well, nothing at all, and see how many passers-by you can get to stop and take a look – well, if there’s a stopped car with people standing outside it staring into the forest, others will also stop and join in.  So we ended up with about five cars’ worth of punters, virtually blocking the road, all trying to spot what Danny had seen – at which point we quietly drove away…..  This is Danny, by the way, fully armed with binoculars and a great knowledge about local wildlife.

We headed into the Arenal Park and, erm, parked in the, erm, car park of the Observatory Lodge, which is a nice building, with a terrace outside which (a) provided us with a coffee, (b) provided decent views over the volcano (which is there behind the clouds, really it is)

and (c) gave a good look out over a feeding station where many birds were, well, feeding. There were large numbers of the ubiquitous Montezuma’s Oropendola, and a Brown Jay was holding its own against these bully birds.  There were also some smaller birds trying to get in on the action, either on the feeders or on the ground.

Palm Tanager
Female Green Honeycreeper and Emerald Tanager
Blue Grey Tanager
Male Green Honeycreeper. Yes, really.

There were others and I could show you many photos of vegetation where a bird was until milliseconds ago.

Let me give you an insight into how pushy the Monty birds are.  Here’s a video which shows the feeding station being replenished – watch what happens when fresh fruit is available all of a sudden.

The Observatory Lodge was originally set up so scientists could stay and study the vast eruption of the Arenal Volcano in 1968 and, now that things have calmed down a bit, offers various trails through the surrounding rainforest. We took one which promised a waterfall at the far end because that sounded good.  It took us through the Observatory gardens (which have several non-indigenous species on display)

and past some interesting sights, such as a rainbow eucalyptus,

some monkeys (yes, it took me ages to spot them)

and an entire family of coati snuffling around for food and entirely oblivious of humans.

We also passed some flower beds where humming birds could be seen and, if lucky, photographed.

Rufus Tailed Humming Bird
Black crested Coquette

Jane did a good job to capture the Rufus-tailed hummingbird as it went about its business.

(From a geek’s point of view, it’s interesting to note the clash between the 30 frames a second of the video and the considerably higher frequency of wing beats of the bird.)

Then we headed off on the Waterfall trail which led to….

…in my case an opportunity to offer to take a photo of a couple there who thought that having them pictured in front of the waterfall represented an improvement on the marvels of Mother Nature. They were a mixed-race couple. He was English and she, Scottish.  That’s not really an excuse, though, is it?

The way down

was occasionally obstructed by groups of Very Serious Birders

who thought that getting a photo like this

constituted a satisfactory result. Good luck to them, I say. I quite often find that wildlife spotting is enormously frustrating, because of my increasingly poor eyesight. Firstly, I can’t see the bleeders; secondly, even if I can, I can’t appreciate them unless I can get a photo so I can see what’s going on in detail. Many people will coo with wonder as they see some kind of exotic creature scuttling off to a point where they can no longer see it.  All I’ve seen (and this is if I’ve been lucky) is a flash of movement of something or other, which is hardly something to celebrate.  I need the photo so I can see what it is I’ve seen at leisure.  If it’s a good photo that others might like, then for me that’s job done.

Danny pointed out an interesting facet of tree growth in the jungle.  I’ve already shown you one tree survival strategy, which is buttress roots – the wide, blade-like roots which provide the tree with nutrition and stability from a distributed footprint.  Danny also showed us stilt roots,

A Walking Palm

an approach whereby the tree sends roots down separately from a central trunk, to lodge outside the footprint of the tree and provide extra stability.  The tree can also judge which side the light is coming from and send more roots down that side, to give it more strength. In that sense, the tree above can sort of move, hence it being called a Walking Palm. Either that, or it’s doing a handstand, of course.

If I were to walk the trail, I would simply think it was a nice piece of exercise, because I simply can’t spot stuff going on around me.  But some stuff is so arcane it takes an expert to find it. For example, there are some palm leaves that I would simply walk past without really noticing anything. An expert like Danny, though, can spot the subtle signs of damage to a palm leaf that tells him that a species of bat has made its home underneath the leaf.

So you have to know what to look for and then can have a go at photographing it

otherwise you’d walk by, unaware of the ingenious life strategy going on under your nose.  (This is a theme I will come back to in a couple of days, so stay tuned if you’re interested.)

We also saw a couple of Crested Guan.

which is to say that Danny spotted them and I took a photo of one of them.  It’s a good photo, I think, but I need others to help me see these things to get the photos.

And that was about it for our walk through the Observatory Lodge trails.  On a clear day, you can see the volcano.  Today?

Not so much. Never mind, the morning was absorbing and educational, and it was good to talk to Danny about life and politics in Costa Rica (hint – it’s no better or worse than UK or US politics, and just as frustrating).

For the afternoon, we had elected to go to one of the well-known attractions of the La Fortuna area – the Hanging Bridges.  There are two parks which offer a walk through the forest canopy, the Skywalk and Mistico Park.  On Esteban’s recommendation, we went for the latter,

mainly because the bridges offered a view of the volcano, and – who knows? – maybe we’d be able actually to see it later on in the day. There is a restaurant there, at which we lunched on a hearty and tasty local dish, casado, and which gives a view of the volcano.  It looked a little as if the clouds were lifting. Only a little, mind.

After lunch, we made as if to set off on the two-and-three-quarter-mile trail.  Danny stopped us before we even started, and pointed out something that – as ever – we’d have missed if we didn’t know what to look for.  In this case it was a snake,

and not just any old snake, but an Eyelash Palm Pitviper – one which was not fast asleep like the one we saw in Bijagua, but was coiled and ready to spring.  Apparently, they’re so quick that they can catch a hummingbird mid-flight. They are the sixth most poisonous snake in Costa Rica, and after a bite you have about three hours to get yourself to hospital, so finding one so close to the car park was a relief. It would have been a bugger if we’d been deep into the woods and got bitten.

This, although dangerous, is a small snake, and we asked Danny how he’d spotted it.  He let us into one of the local secrets – when something like this is found near where people go in the park, a tape barrier is erected to keep people away.  We found another example on the trail

but as far as we could tell its dangerous denizen had left the scene.

So, what did we see on the trail?

Apart from six suspension bridges across various canyons,

frankly, not a huge amount.  Danny was full of interesting information about how nature takes its course in a rain forest environment like this, but we scored relatively few photos of note. The bridge above gives the possibility of a decent view of the volcano if it’s visible.

One of the most important creatures for the environment is also one of the smallest – a tiny stingless bee called Mariola Amarilla. It’s no larger than a medium-sized mosquito

but has a critical role as a forest pollinator. The picture above was taken at a kind of bug hotel which is one of the various places these creatures have made a home, which you can tell by the entry point to their hive.

What other wildlife did we see?

Leaf cutter ants
A Barred Tree Creeper. We think.
A Broad-billed Motmot
A tiny anole lizard of some sort
A Giant Banded Anole lizard. Probably.
A wolf spider

and – Jane’s favourite of the whole day – a huge cockroach with a blue bum.

So ended a splendid day of exploration of the Arenal area.  It really brought home the extra value that a switched-on guide brings in this country; if we’d walked the paths by ourselves, we’d have missed virtually all of the sights that we actually saw.  Danny did a great job and was a pleasure to spend the day with.

After we got back to La Finca, we didn’t feel the need for a large dinner (apart from anything else we knew that we had to be away early the next morning), but we did feel the need for a beer.  So we quenched our thirst and, at the same time, had a great chat with Esteban.  There were some essential bits of information he provided – when we needed to get away in order to be at our next stop in a timely fashion, whether any of the roads were closed or crappy and how much our room bill at La Finca was (not much, actually – good value, good food, good service, thoroughly recommended).  We also chatted about how he got where he was – a very charismatic but slightly roguish figure providing a great service to guests in a comfortable establishment. In turn, Jane convinced him of the value of Duolingo as a language learning aid, and I put an expensive item on his to-do list – a balloon flight over Stockholm.  He is a qualified balloon pilot and actually offers balloon flights from la Finca.  Had we been staying longer, we’d have been tempted.

Alas, our time there was at an end.  The next day we had to get ourselves near enough to the east coast to be picked up for a boat ride to our next destination.  Pura Aventura were very switched on and had alerted us to a change in where to meet the boat.  So we had a somewhat longer drive, to Caño Blanco, for an earlier rendezvous with the boat. So, guess what?  Another early start….

 

Day 9 – Bijagua to Fortuna

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Monday 27 February 2023 – All we had to do today was to get ourselves from Bijagua to our next stop, La Finca Lodge near La Fortuna, a two-hour drive roughly back towards San José in the centre of the country.

We achieved this without problems but not without distractions, mainly in the form of new birds to see on the feeders at Casitas Tenorio before we left.

Collared Aracari (member of Toucan family)
Collared Aracari close up
Not sure – LBJ (little brown job)
White-throated Magpie Jay

(Those with a keen eye will notice that the nice folk at Easily, who host my website, have managed to sort out the problem that made it impossible for me to upload photos and videos, which cramps one’s style as a blog writer somewhat.)

Jane also managed to get a great video of the Montezuma Oropendola’s extraordinary call, which is accompanied by a unique display.

A coati got in on the action, too.

and Nana, the manager, fed the pizza that we couldn’t finish to the B&B’s dogs, Whisky and Dingo.

We were on the point of leaving when Nana’s husband pointed out a very unusual critter on one of the table ornaments.

He opined that it was an ogre-faced spider, but a swift Google search disabused us of that notion.  We showed this picture to a chap who was described to us as a professional naturalist who initially had no idea what it was.  Eventually, he thought it might be a leaf-mimic katydid. Whatever, it’s a weird beast.

We took our leave of Casitas Tenorio, which had been a very well-organised and pleasant place to stay and started the drive over to La Finca Lodge.  The roads were basically fine, with good surfaces, which made the whole thing more relaxing. The countryside was very pleasant, and Jane grabbed some shots of it as we went by.

One thing we noticed as we drove along, that marks Costa Rica out to us from pretty much anywhere else we’ve visited is something that I hadn’t explicitly clocked until Scott, the American chap on our tour last night, pointed it out.

The place is immaculate.

There is no litter. None.

Coming from the UK, where paths and roads are littered with burger boxes, nitro gas canisters and Red Bull cans, I find this extraordinary. The buildings may on occasion be ramshackle, but the place is spotless.

I wish the UK could find this sense of civic pride.

Our plan had been to visit, and indeed have lunch at, the Observatory Lodge in the park of the Arenal Volcano, which is one of Costa Rica’s better-known features. It was dormant until 1968, when it erupted dramatically and unexpectedly, destroying the small town of Tabacón. Arenal’s eruption from 1968 to 2010 is the tenth longest duration volcanic eruption on Earth since 1750. Since 2010, though, it has been dormant, which makes visiting the area slightly less daunting.

What was daunting, however, was the surface of the road that Waze suggested was the route to the lodge, which was something of a detour from the direct route to La Finca.  It was rough, boulder-strewn and cratered. We managed to do about half a kilometre before deciding that life was too short to endure any more.   So we turned round and resumed our journey to La Finca.  As we approached, we saw the countryside dotted with vividly-coloured trees.

We subsequently found out that this is called Corteza Amarilla, and we were exceedingly lucky to see its display, as it flowers like this for just one week every year.

Waze took us towards La Finca with unerring accuracy but its directions left us halted outside a large and rather forbidding-looking metal gate.  We weren’t sure (a) whether it was an entrance to La Finca or (b) what to do about getting in if it was. At that point, a car coming in the opposite direction stopped and its driver wound down his window, so I did the same.  He asked, in really quite good English, if he could help and we said we were looking for La Finca.  He confirmed it was, and did some magic which opened the gate for us.  We have no idea who he was or how come he could work this magic, but we were very grateful anyway.

We drove in and were greeted very cordially at their reception and shown to our room, which was called Gecko.  It was a very nice, large room

with, to Jane’s delight, a hammock on the veranda.  She lost no time in getting acquainted with it whilst I had a well-earned kip started backing up, selecting and processing photos for this blog.  Whilst she was resting out there, she had a small visitor, a humming bird of some description.

Come 6 o’clock we headed over to La Finca’s restaurant, where we had a very decent evening meal.  We also met Esteban, the founder and owner of the place, a charismatic, knowledgeable and slightly roguish man.  As part of our Pura Aventura itinerary, we could choose between various options for the following day – a float along the river spotting wildlife, hiking around a park with many waterfalls, a visit to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, a trip to see the Hanging Bridges of La Fortuna, and so on. Esteban was clearly very clued-up about the benefits of each and helped us make our selection.  We decided on the Arenal trip and an afternoon on the hanging bridges. The Arenal Observatory Lodge is in the volcano’s national park and features various trails and significant opportunity to see – you guessed it – wildlife.  This meant an early start the next day to give us the best chance to spot it, in the company of a very knowledgeable guide (the chap we puzzled with our katydid photo).

We agreed that the time to start was (sigh) 0730, so we headed back to our Gecko room after dinner with an intention to get an early night, which was only slightly spoiled by my staying up rather too long creating some of the deathless prose that you will already have read. You have, haven’t you? Good.

So, tune in tomorrow to see (a) whether we got up in time on the morrow and ( b) whether we had a good day. Spoiler alert: we did.