Cindy Southgate's Travels

February 15

I woke up at 4 a.m. but stayed in my bunk until I noticed the sun starting to peak through. I crawled out from under my mosquito netting and stepped gingerly down the metal ladder to make my way over to the communal sink area. I brought my small ziplock bag with my tiny toiletries. We had to carry everything on our backs, in and out of the park, that we would need over the three days so we made sure to have very small amounts of soap, shampoo, toothpaste etc. I even spoke to my eye doctor beforehand and he gave me some daily contacts for free so I wouldn’t have to carry the cleaning liquids.

Once we were dressed and ready for the day’s hike, we headed over to the cafeteria for breakfast. The meals were always served buffet style, so we had lots of choices and more than enough to eat. While we were eating we were able to take our devices over to one of the charging stations so that everything was fully charged by the time we headed out. While this sounds simple, pretty much everyone there needed to charge things, so there was quite a collection of phones and batteries lined up on the table.

We were all set to go by 6:30. We met up with Josue, who slept in a separate area reserved for all the guides, and headed out for our first hike of the day. There is a large grassy area in front of the ranger station that used to be used as a landing strip for small planes.

There are many different kinds of Anoles in Costa Rica. Most of them are very small – about 4 inches long. They move very quickly so getting a good picture can be challenging.

There are over 9,000 types of plants in Costa Rica. The fruit on the Ficus tree on the left has an interesting way of reproducing. Tiny male and female flowers develop inside a structure that will eventually become fruit. A tiny female wasp enters through a one-way tunnel. After pollinating the flowers, she lays eggs inside some of the flower’s stalks. She dies, and a few weeks later the new males, who have no wings, mate with the females. Those females collect pollen and leave through a hole that the males have made by chewing, and head out to find a tree to repeat the process.

There are many types of ferns, some that can grow quite tall and others that simply blanket the forest floor. I love the trees that send new roots down from their branches. They make a great playground for the monkeys.

We spotted these Spider Monkeys playing above us. There are four kinds of monkeys found in Costa Rica – Spider, Cappuchin, Howler and Squirrel. They can all be found in Corcovado.

We were mostly on the lookout for mammals, but these beautiful birds caught our attention. On the left is a Crested Juan. We were surprised to see it so high up in a tree because it is a fairly large bird at 90 cm long.

The Black-throated Trogan is easier to spot with it’s brilliant yellow belly.

After covering 8.5 km on the trails we headed back to the station for lunch. We had a bit of downtime and then headed back out at 2.

We saw several more iguanas, lizards, geckos and anoles. I have never found flying insects to be bothersome in Costa Rica. I wonder if these animals are eating them….

This Osprey was taking his time eating the fish that he had trapped beneath his feet.

I was so excited when we found this Tamandua high up in a tree. By zooming in, you can see the giant claws that help him climb. They are very similar to Sloth’s toes.

We watched this Tapir with her baby for several minutes. The baby had been lying down, but got up and wandered over to its mother to nurse. Josue spotted this Tapir footprint nearby.

As it was getting later, we followed the trail down towards the ocean. We took a few photos and waited for the sun to set.

There is always time for a romantic gesture…..

The beach was lovely. There were several people waiting here to take sunset photos before heading back to camp.

We were all trying to rush back before the light was gone but had to wait for some Tapirs to cross the path. A bit further up someone spotted an owl but it was too dark to get a good shot. We covered another 7 km this afternoon.

We had our dinner shortly after 6 pm and then headed over to shower and prepare for our challenging hike the following morning. After my shower I put on the clothes I would wear the next day. That would save some fumbling around in the dark because we would be leaving before the power was turned on for the day. It was very dark by our bunks, but we spread our things out on the floor to organize them. In the morning we would need to pack our breakfast and lunch and fill our water containers. We had about 21 km to cover to reach our pick-up spot so the plan was to be ready to go at 5 am.