Cindy Southgate's Travels

Wednesday, February 26

Today would be our second visit to Corcovado Park. This time we were headed to the Padrillo Ranger Station. My original plan was to visit the Padrillo area and to do the Llorona waterfall tour. Unfortunately the latter was the location of some illegal activity, so we were not permitted to visit there. We also had a bit of trouble finding a guide. No one is allowed into Corcovado without one. I told Brian, the hotel manager, that I really wanted to visit Padrillo. On our last day he arranged for a group of us to go with one of his staff members, who wasn’t really a certified guide. She was very knowledgeable about the area though and proved to be a great guide.

First we followed a small river to a couple of small waterfalls.The trails on this tour were much more fun than the last tour. They were a bit rougher and more interesting. We enjoyed picking our way across the river while trying not to slip in!

Our guide stopped a few times to show us different types of plant life and trees.

Our next stop was at the waterfall for a refreshing dip. The water was quite cold so we didn’t stay in for very long.

After our dip we backtracked a bit and then took a different trail back towards the Padrillo Ranger Station. These trails were a bit quieter than in the Sirena location. The small river running along side the path was very pretty.

There are 69 types of lizards and 137 different kinds of snakes found in Costa Rica. Twenty are considered “dangerously venomous”. Our guide spotted this non-venomous Tiger Rat snake….it has a very long, skinny tail and can be found on the ground or in trees.

We also saw this Anole and some more Capuchin Monkeys.

We stopped at the Ranger Station to use the facilities and have another short break. They had a display of skulls from many of the animals found in the park.

On our way back towards the beach we saw a large group of Coatis. They didn’t seem to mind us walking along beside them. We enjoyed watching one of them attempt to break open a coconut.

After about four hours in the park and 10 kilometers of walking we were ready to head back to the hotel. We just had a little more time to explore the beach and watch some parrots in a nearby tree.

In the afternoon we covered another 6 kilometers on the trails near our hotel.

Our last sunset at Jaguar’s Jungle.

Fun Fact: Costa Rica does not have names for their streets but has numbers for the highways. There are no addresses.