Last weekend was the Costa Rican independence day and I took advantage of the long weekend to go to Tortuguero. This is a small town on the Caribbean coast in the middle of a national park. It is famous for the turtles that lay eggs there and the canals that provide the only transportation to the town.

I left on Friday night with two other people from Bagaces and we spent the night in San Jose. The next day we took the bus out of San Jose and headed across the center of Costa Rica, passing through the beautiful Braulio Carrillo National Park. On the bus we met a friendly guy who works as a guide in Tortuguero and he was useful in assisting us finding our way. We got off the bus in the town of Cariari and we bought a bus/boat ticket to Tortuguero. It was Independence Day so the road was blocked off and a parade was passing through. This meant we had to make our way through the crowd and parade to the bus waiting on the other side. The parade was full of kids waving the Costa Rican flag and playing drums. The hour-long bus ride took us through endless banana plantations and, at one point, we had to get out of the bus and walk through disinfectant to get rid of any harmful diseases. The bus dropped us off at the end of the road where the only transportation left was by boat. The boat went down the brown meandering river and the banana plantations quickly gave way to jungle. A crocodile passed in front of us as the rain began to come down hard. After about an hour of river travel reminiscent of Apocalypse Now we came out into a wider lagoon and soon arrived at the town of Tortuguero. Our new guide friend helped us find a place to stay for the night and we arranged two guided tours with him. One that night with the turtles and a canoe trip the next morning. We had an excellent Caribbean style chicken dinner with coconut rice and wandered on the beach. The beach was endless and full of palm trees and was covered in turtle tracks which looked like little tractor tracks driving up on the beach. At 8:00 we met our guide to go see the turtles. Each guide had access to part of the beach and the park rangers would let them know when a turtle was spotted. We found a turtle right away but it had just finished laying eggs. Luckily, another turtle showed up right away. The rules were far more strict than the time I went in Nicaragua. There were absolutely no white lights allowed, only red lights, and we were forbidden to approach the turtles until they had finished making the nests and started to lay the eggs. All in all we saw four turtles show up in only an hour and, despite the strict rules, we got a good view of the egg laying and the crawl back to the sea. These were Green turtles which were about the same size as the Olive Ridley turtles I had seen before.

The next morning we had to wake up before 6 to go on our canoe tour. We had about seven people in a dugout canoe and we left from the national park docks. There were three paddles in the boat so I had a chance to paddle for the first time in about 2 years. The guide had lived there his whole life and had a lot of experience with guiding so he was able to pick out many birds and animals that I would have never seen, as well as expertly navigating the canoe. We saw many kinds of birds including toucans, a real close up of a night heron and a jacana with huge spider-like feet which allow it walk on floating vegetation. We also saw reptiles such as a Green Basilisk which can run on water, baby iguanas, and a caiman, which is like a small crocodile. Plus we saw a couple of different kinds of monkeys, including the long armed and long tailed yellow spider monkeys. After about three hours it started to get hot and we paddled back to Tortuguero for breakfast. Later in the day we took a 5 km walk along the beach to a rocky outcropping known as the Tortuguero Mountain. The beach was full of turtle tracks and the nests stretched the entire beach. On the way back we followed an inland path that went through some woods and the Tortuguero airport.

We returned the next day by catching the boat at eleven. The boat driver was very friendly and acted as a tour guide by looking for wildlife along the way. We saw more spider monkeys, Green Basilisk lizards and crocodiles. One of the neat things that he showed us was nesting bats. They would curl up on logs sticking out of the water and they looked exactly like moss or fungus growing on the log. When I translated to the English speaking passengers that he was showing us bats, nobody would believe me. It wasn't until somebody got too close to them and scared them away that I knew I had translated properly. They immediately flew over to another log and disappeared again. We finished the boat ride just in time to catch the bus back to Cariari and then to San Jose. We had a bit of time to spare in San Jose so we went a nice Mediterranean restaurant for dinner.