Tortuguero

This week we travelled to Tortuguero on the north east Caribbean coast – heading towards the Nicaraguan border

The journey
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This was definitely not our best prepared trip. I’d spoken to a teacher in the school who’d done the trip and although he said it was a bit awkward it sounded straightforward enough. The problem is that Tortuguero is only accessible by air or water. There are no roads. He said you take a bus from San José to Cariari, and then a boat to Tortuguero. However, we left later than planned, and on the bus to Cariari I read the ‘Lonely Planet’ and realised that we’d need a bus from Cariari for another hour before we got to a boat. So we were too late to complete the trip in one day. We had to make an unscheduled stop overnight in Cariari, which has absolutely nothing to recommend itself.

Early start
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We were up at 4am the next day to get the 5am bus to Pavona. The bus picked up people along the way and was quite full when we reached a Del Monte banana plantation where they all got off. We continued and the bus stopped in the middle of what was basically a farm. When I asked where the boat was I was told it would leave at 8.30 from the bottom of the cattle track we were on. We took a look, but could only see a stream. But at 8.30, sure enough there was a boat taxi, which could take about 16 people. We sailed down the canal and into a bigger river, then a bigger river again. The journey was about an hour long through spectacular jungle scenery. It reminded me of the Amazon.

Tortuguero
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The village of Tortuguero is very small, and just has walking tracks everywhere. Because there are no cars there are no roads. It’s just between the sea and a river and lagoon. The sea has an enormous beach with very strong surf and currents, but the real beauty is along the river. The Rio Tortuguero and lagoon is very wide at this point, and there are about 4 or 5 bodies of water off it in view of the town.

El Parque Nacional
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We got our tickets to the National Park, and went on the 2km walking trail. After all the animals we’d seen in Manuel Antonio, it was a bit disappointing. However, when we were on the beach I could see marks like they had been made by vehicles with caterpillar tracks. Then I noticed big pits in the sand at the top of the beach, and realised that they were turtle tracks. We had yet to see fully what the Tortuguero National Park had in store.

Green sea turtles
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That night there was a tour to see the green sea turtles come onto the beach to lay their eggs. I think it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life. The beach was beautiful for a start because it was the night of the full moon. Throughout the night, the turtles would emerge from the surf and pull themselves slowly and clumsily up the beach. They dig a big pit (the only part of the process I didn’t see) and then lay over 100 eggs in the sand. You can get right up to them, but everything is strictly controlled. You must be with a guide, each guide can only have 10 visitors, and only 10 guides are allowed. With infrared torches, so as not to disturb the turtles, you can see the supple eggs being laid in the deepest part of the pit, looking just like ping pong balls. The turtle then covers them in sand (showering us in sand in the process). She then hauls herself back into the sea. The whole process takes each turtle 2½ hours. Since the conservation began the number of green sea turtles has grown from about 3,000 to over 20,000. When the eggs hatch 60 days later the little turtles will dig themselves out and scurry to the sea. But with predators on both land and sea only about 1% to 3% will survive. They will be adult in 30-40 years, and return, always to the same beach, to lay their eggs. They will live to be over 100.

Canoeing trip
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The next morning allowed a relative lie-in until 5.15. There was canoeing trip for three hours through the park from 6-9am. Everything in Costa Rica looks better in the morning. The sky is blue and the light is beautiful. The views from the canoe as we passed through the lagoons, rivers and canals were amazing. We saw spider, howler and capuchin monkeys, toucans, sloths, morpho butterflies, blue and tiger herons, caimans, otters and huge spiders. I read that Costa Rica has only 0.03% of the planet’s surface, but has 6% of the world’s biodiversity. All of this was evident in Tortuguero that morning.

Photos and blogs
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I’ve now put some of our photos online. The site is very raw, but will improve over the next few weeks. It’s www.angelfire.com/journal2/eamon. In addition, I’ve put these weekly emails into a weblog, irishduo.blogspot.com, so you can check up back issues!

A longer mail again this week. Hope I haven’t lost any of you. Until next week!