Wanderung 28

A Warm Winter Break

December 2013 - January 2014


 

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Wednesday January 15, 2014: Rain Forest, Limon, Costa Rica

We had changed our shore excursion to one with three different methods of experiencing the Costa Rican rain forest: a boat ride on a coastal canal bordered by the lowland rain forest, then in the mountains a walk on a rain forest trail to see the bottom layers of the high altitude rain forest, and finally a cable car ride along the top of the mountain rain forest canopy to see the top layers of the high altitude rain forest. We ended up being away from the ship from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., so it turned out to be a very long day in the rain forest indeed.

Our tour bus took us through the streets of Limon past the container transshipment port and out of town no more than a couple miles, if that, to the canal where we boarded a small twin-hulled motorboat. I was surprised to learn the canal, originally constructed to move tree trunks down from the rain forest to be processed near Limon, was actually a series of canals connecting the coastal ponds, somewhat like the sequence of seaside ponds that we had seen in Curong on the Great Australian Bight during Wanderung 26, our "Walkabout and Sailabout" trip Down Under. Our guide said that the canals led all the way up the coast of Costa Rica to Nicaragua much like the Intracoastal Waterway on the East Coast of the United States.

We then glided up and down the canal for about an hour, looking for wildlife. It was a brackish water system, combing the fresh water from the interior with the tidal salt water from the Caribbean Sea, so it was ecologically rich. Predominantly we saw birds of one sort or another including ibis cowbirds from Africa, a kingfisher, and herons, including the Great Blue Heron, Little Blue Heron, and Green Heron.


 


 

But we did see some other animals, including one cayman--an smaller relative of the alligator--and a few sloths. The sloths, surprisingly, were moving about a bit which made them MUCH easier to see; otherwise they are like furry bumps on a tree and very difficult to spot. Once again, Monika used the 26x zoom on her camera to get decent close-up pictures of a mother sloth climbing in the treetops while carrying her baby kind of wrapped around her stomach. The baby appeared to be clinging like a limpet to her, which was no wonder as they were at least 70 feet or so above the ground!

We had a quick snack of fruit at the end of our boat ride, which we consumed whilst driving toward the central spine of mountains that runs basically down the middle of Costa Rica. That drive was almost 2 hours, but the bus was air conditioned and that was kind of a nice break from the heat.

We finally stopped at a rain forest complex located next to a rain forest National Park in the mountainous middle of Costa Rica. I say it was a complex because several different activities were offered: guided walks on the rain forest floor, aerial tram tours of the rain forest canopy, zip-line crossings from one high point to another, river rafting, and even some cabins for staying overnight. We had signed up for the first two, and we began our visit with a guided walk through the rain forest. Our guide was quite knowledgeable, spoke passable English, and took great pains to explain what we were looking at as we ambled along a concrete trail that looked for all the world like a narrow sidewalk in the jungle.

Mostly we saw different types of vegetation peculiar to the rain forest environment, but we also did run across some animals, the cutest of which were the leaf-cutter ants, who were industriously taking tiny pieces of leaves from the tree on one side of the trail to their ant hill deep in the forest on the other side. Since the ants carried pieces of leaves much larger than themselves, it looked more like pieces of leaves had suddenly come to life and were wriggling their way across the trail or up the trunk of a tree, an impression that was only dispelled if you looked more closely at it and saw the teeny tiny ant laboring along underneath each piece.


 


 

But we also saw a couple of spiders and snakes. The spiders were quite large, healthy, and rather intimidating to tell the truth. I was quite happy not to have run into their webs on the trail as one was maybe 5 inches across and looked quite lethal. We saw some red cautionary tape around one area, which we were told had a poisonous viper in it, and sure enough it did although he was apparently curled up asleep for the moment. Saw another poisonous snake right beside the trail, but it was small and did not appear aggressive, thankfully.


 

After a complimentary lunch we were ready for our aerial tram ride in the rain forest canopy, but the tram broke down! Nuts! That part of our rain forest tour was canceled, but instead we took another rain forest walk along a different trail past the overnight cabins and on to an old, somewhat rickety-looking suspension bridge. The cabins looked quite comfortable although we did not see the inside of course. In the stream flowing underneath the bridge we saw some relatives of the piranha fish of South America, but we were assured that they did not attack humans (a peacable piranha?). In a bush right before the suspension bridge we found a "stick bug", an insect that so carefully mimics the appearance of a small green twig that you really can't see it unless somebody points it out to you!


 

Yes, that's really a bug!

Once back at the entrance, we reboarded our tour bus and drove for 2 hours back to Limon. I was exhausted and even though cramped up in that bus seat I managed to take a short nap by leaning on Monika's shoulder. Our guide provided some info about Costa Rica's government, economics, education system, drug problems, taxes and so forth, so we were kept entertained until our bus arrived back at the port. When we arrived, Dave the tour director climbed about and told us that he had already arranged a 50% refund of our ticket prices due to not having the tram ride. Really, we had a great sunny day for our entire visit to the rain forest, which was quite unusual, so not having the tram ride was not as big a disappointment as it would otherwise have been.

However, our tour had taken so long that we didn't return to our cabin until 5:20 or so, and just had time to throw on some clean clothes before hustling down to the Bordeaux Dining room (sans shower!) for dinner with Eugen, Brigitte, Carmine, and Shelley. After dinner I was wiped out and my eyes closed of their own accord while I was trying to do an acrostic puzzle on my IPad, so I finally gave up and turned in for the night.



Copyright 2014 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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December 2013
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