Saving turtles
I met some people at the hotel, who offered me a free ride to the boat launch place to Tortuguero, which was pretty cool. We drove past tons of Chiquita banana plantations. They put these blue plastic bags around them, and I’ve heard lots of different reasons for this…it keeps the bats and bugs away, they’re loaded with pesticides (which weaken their flavor), and it helps them grow bigger by holding heat and humidity in. I don’t know which of these are true, but I’ve heard the pesticides thing twice…maybe check if your Chiquita bananas are from Costa Rica and not buy them. It should say right on the sticker where they’re from. I heard bananas from Equador are good. Anyway, banana trees take 9 months to grow (from seed, or maybe just from really small), and they produce one stalk of bananas, and that’s it. At every tree, you see a little baby one starting to grow, to keep the supply running. I thought this was some pretty interesting banana information.
The boat ride out to Tortuguero was pretty cool. We saw tons of birds and some monkeys (this doesn’t excite me the way it used to…I’m out searching for a sloth now), and lots of tropical flowers that I knew existed, but only in boutique flower shops. In town, I took a walk down the beach, where I was told I was out of season for seeing the turtles lay eggs (which is really the big attraction), but maybe could see little baby turtles making their way to sea. Well, I sure did find 6 of them! It was in the middle of the day, though, and the sand had gotten too hot for them, and they were on the verge of dying. We found some that were already dead. I took the six of them, and brought them to the shore. One ran into the surf right away; two more followed slowly. The last three didn’t move; they were dead, and eventually were just washed away into the sea. Apparently, given the odds of nature, the three that I saved were probably soon serving as shark food or something, but it felt cool to help out those little guys, particularly in the light of the conservation effort that the area is focused on.
I went on a tour early the next morning, and I, unfortunately, didn’t see that much. Tons of birds, a huge orange iguana, a poison dart frog (which apparently are only as poisonous as rumoured only if you’re allergic), and some howler monkeys. Maybe some other types of monkeys too, but these howler monkeys are crazy. I’ve seen them before, but I’ve never heard them howl. Well, I guess I just didn’t know that what I was hearing was their howl. It’s crazy! From far away, it sounds like a really, really big dog barking a really deep bark. And it sounds really far away, but still really loud. You can kind of make the noise by inhaling and opening your throat really wide; it’s kind of a low, growl-y sound, but they’re so loud, and you just can’t believe that so much noise comes out of these cute little monkeys. We were messing with this one little group, making the noise from below, and they would do it back…the one guy, like the head monkey, would raise his fist in the air at us when he did it, like he was yelling at us…get out of here you stupid people, this is my place. Eventually, they got bored with us humans and stopped responding. Stupid people, so easily entertained.
I left after the tour early that afternoon…picking up the pace a bit as time is running out for the Central America leg of the journey. Had a nice long boat-bus-bus-bus journey that day. The 1st bus-bus connection was broken up by another adventure at the bank (two door security system again…this time I tried to go with my whole backpack, which was just silly, and I was made to leave it outside the door, near a locker area, which is apparently where you’re supposed to keep your metal objects while in the bank.) The 2nd bus-bus connection was a nice 3 hour wait or something like that, so I ate an early dinner and found other stuff to do to kill the time. For dinner, I ordered a casado, which is the typical dish in Costa Rica. You can get them with beef, chicken, or pork. I do believe I got the pork this time, for a change of pace. These casados were talked about very highly by several people, though I’ve yet to figure out why. I keep trying them to see if maybe I’ve just gotten a bad one, but by now, I don’t think so. Casado means married in Spanish. First of all…I don’t know if this meal is what a woman is supposed to make for her husband when they get married or what. Second, it’s made of rice, beans, a little salad (which is like cole slaw with a vinegary dressing), some sort of potato something or other, and meat of your choice. I do remember the pork being very salty, which will probably guarantee that I will order chicken next time, unfortunately.
After all this, I was only at Puerto Limon, a pretty crappy place with nothing to do…it’s recommended to not stay at cheap hotels too close to the port, as this is where port workers come looking for a good time. Well, I went to three different places to find one that wasn’t going to kill my budget or end up landing me a good time with a port worker. The place was run by a woman and her two children, who perhaps are learning the family business, because they did nearly all the work, as she gave them instruction. The little boy gave me an air freshener as I walked up to my room – always a good sign. It did a fairly good job of dampening the essence of mothball.
The next day, I killed some time around town (due to rain), then headed out to the coastal town of Cahuita. Despite a good night sleep, I slept nearly the whole way on the bus. I woke up just in time to hand my ticket to the guy walking around checking them. He looked at the ticket. Looked at me. Looked at the ticket, and asked me where I was going. Cahuita, I said in almost too perky a tone, as if it wasn’t obvious from the ticket he was looking at. We’ve already passed Cahuita. Huh. You don’t say. Well, then let’s go to Puerto Viejo (de Talamanca); how much more does it cost? I paid the extra fare, explained to him that this has happened to me several times and asked him to please tell me when we arrived at Puerto Viejo.
We got to Puerto Viejo something like 5 minutes later, and it was quite obvious that we were there (well, since I was paying attention to signs). There was a good steady rain coming down, and I started to make my way to the hostel that had been recommended to me…Rockin’ J’s. According to my map, it’s a little ways outside of town, along a dirt road, but there’s tons of other hotels and stuff along the way, so it’ not like I was in the middle of nowhere. The rain picked up a bit, and I started to get pretty wet. After a good hike, a little bit of backtracking in uncertainty, a bit more of a hike, and a thorough soaking, I found my way there. A short while after I got there, one of my friends from Granada, Dan, walked in, which was cool…it’s always pretty cool to see a familiar face, even if you’ve only known them for a few days…
The next day I decided to take the bus up to Cahuita, the town that I had missed the stop for, to check it out. Turns out it was just a smaller version of where I was, and I was almost glad that I didn’t waste my time. I wasn’t too impressed. What I did want to do was walk through this National Park…a 7 kilometer walk with the jungle on one side and the sea on the other. When I got to the entrance, the guy told me I would only be able to walk 1.4 kilometers (just shy of a mile) because there was a river that was really high. I was really on a search to find a sloth. These guys are nocturnal, sleeping sometime like 20 hours a day, so they’re really hard to find. There were tons of people walking this path….I was really hoping for a nice lonely stroll through the jungle. The river came sooner than I had hoped, and supposedly that was the end of the walk. I was supposed to turn around now. But, I saw a few people who looked like they had just crossed a river (I confirmed this by asking them), so I decided to do it myself and do the entire walk I had planned on. I’ll be damned if I came out here just to walk a lousy 1.4k! I was told it was just above waist-high; another girl confirmed that and added, if you go at the right moment (due to the waves coming in from the sea). Well, I held my bag over my head, and slowly and carefully navigated across, taking caution to avoid the swirls and and sort of strong currents that might push me over. The water got about breast high, just below. I got out at the other end, looked back at the crowd of people at the other side who had watched me, and gave them a little shrug, as if to say, hey, it’s not so bad. It wasn’t really. I was wet now, but I had a good few miles of lonely path to walk, and was quite pleased.
Soon after the river crossing, I ran into some good muck…the whole area was swamped for a while, and I thought maybe that’s another reason why I hadn’t seen anyone else over there. I was pretty sure I was going to get something growing in my foot after all that, but I have yet to see any life down there. The mud subsided, and it was a really gorgeous walk. I never saw any sloths, but I did see a huge spider, a bright yellow snake, a whole ton of monkeys, and a group of racoons and vultures bonding over human garbage in the camping area. I tried to take a picture of them, but I seriously think those racoons were coming after me, so I’ll just leave that to your imagination.
Tags: Costa Rica, Tag Index
Tania