On tour with Estelle and Jean-Marc: Tortuguero

On Friday we left our cosy nest in Atenas. Many thanks to Frank and his mother Jacqueline for making our stay so comfortable. As a proverb says: If you think you reached the top, you should continue your journey.

So we followed our wanderlust from the west coast to the east coast, to a small village on a shore named Tortuguero. The trip started in Atenas with a 1 hour bus drive to San José. From there we took a 2 hours bus drive to Cariari. After arriving in Cariari, we first had to find the old bus terminal in order to realize that apparently nobody from the officials understood our ‘Spanish’ (or we didn’t understood theirs). Finally we figured out that the next bus to Pavona was leaving two and a half hours later. So we took out our sitting mat and passed our time reading books on the Kindle and observing the people around us. We concluded that even without eating chocolate, the Ticos aren’t just skin and bones and they like to share it generously with their environment ;)
Three hours later, we caught the last bus on that day and enjoyed the fantastic view to the amazing landscape near the Caribbean coast.

In Pavona we left on a tiny boat through the small canals of the river. We saw big birds in the sky, energetic monkeys jumping through the rooftops of the trees and snappy caimans swimming a few centimetres away from our boat. It felt like a trip through Jurassic Park and we wouldn’t have been surprised, if a big dinosaur would have crossed our path.

The river was so dry, that even with this little boat we stranded twice on sandbanks

Back to the Jurassic Period

A colourful Toucan during lunch.

Our way brought us deep in the jungle...

...next to caimans waiting for their prey.

After 12 hours of travelling, we arrived in Tortuguero. This small village is just accessible by boat or by plane because there is no road leading through the jungle to reach the town. The beach of Tortuguero is home to thousands of water turtles, who come here every second year to bury their eggs.

The nest of a hummingbird

It was so hot here, that this basketball field wasn't occupied a lot during our stay in Tortuguero

The rooms of our lodge

Wandering through life like Huckleberry Finn

We explored the surrounding area by canoe (in the tributary of the Tortuguero river) and by hiking with Markus and Felix (two German fellows) through the National Park. Below you'll find some pictures of our exploration.

A cute 'little' female golden orb-web spider: Nephila clavipes also called banana spider.

Leaf-cutter ants don't eat the leaves but they carry them back to their anthill to cultivate a garden with a fungus. This fungus feeds the whole colonie.