After a short weekend in San Jose did we go by bus and boat to Tortugero where we stayed two nights in the Mawamba Lodge between the Caribbean See and the Tortugero River. The little piece of land the lodge was on was about 150 m wide and the only way to go somewhere was by boat.
We took two boat tours through the jungle. The first one was in the morning where we saw mostly birds and some howler monkeys. Only at one tree we spotted a capuchin monkey who was very low down but mostly behind a lot of leaves. The second one we did in the afternoon and there we saw birds too but also caymans, monkeys, iguanas an otter.
At Tortugero we also did our first walk through the rain forest. The forest in Tortugero is a secondary rain forest, that means this forest or parts of it has been cut down and now it has more gaps between the trees and more small plants between it. On this walk we saw mostly red frogs and dragonflies. Our guide explained us a lot of things about the trees as well. Before we went back to the lodge by boat found our captain a little snake and so we saw the first wild snake.
On Wednesday we went by plain from Tortugero back to San Jose where we picked up our car. We headed towards Boco Tapada and the Laguna Lagarto Lodge. This lodge is not only near the boarder to Nicaragua but also at the end of the world or it seams like it.
Before we got to the Lodge we visited a coffee plantation whose owner is someone from Switzerland. There we got a little tour through the plantation by car. Little did we know that we also got a sneak peak of the road we would have for the last 40km to the lodge.
Since the lodge was away from anything the road was really bad and had a lot of holes. It took us 1 hour and 30 minutes to truckle to the lodge. As we arrived at the lodge there where two green macaw. The green macaws are very rare but in this area live about 50 of them but even there it is rare to see them so close to the lodge. Next to the Restaurant there was a tree with bananas for the birds. Before dinner there where a bunch of little toucans and some green parrots. The next morning we got lucky again, at this tree where a bunch of big toucans with nice colored beaks.
At this lodge we went also for a little boat ride on the Rio San Carlos up down to the Nicaraguan border. At the border we visited the last village in Costa Rica that has a population of about 100. A lot of this 100 Persons are kids, this could bee because the have electricity only since 2 years. At the village we also got to see two red macaws who where in a tree eating some almonds. On the boat ride we also saw a family of monkeys who didn’t cared that we watched at them for about 10 minutes.
After the boat ride we took a second walk in the rain forest that was right next to the lodge. This rain forest was a primary, so never cut down. The difference was huge to the one in Tortugero. This walk was very impressive even though we didn’t saw a lot of animals.
The days at Laguna Lagarto where very nice and quiet.
Today we drove to the volcano Arenal where we are staying for two nights hoping that the sky clears up so we can see the lava at the top of the volcano.
Toucan at the Laguna Lagarto Lodge.
