Costa Rica is a magic place (part 1 of 2)

We went to Costa Rica early in 2012. It was a dark cold winter and we longed for sunshine. Costa Rica has a few world heritage sites and we didn’t visit any of them. But we one of the places that we visited could be such a site. Costa Rica is a beautiful place with easy pace, wonderful nature and nice weather most of the times. Pura Vida!

A sign on the beach, simply keep away.

Is this a rest of a turtle egg?

A green froggy

We arrived in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica in the evening. Early in the morning we left to explore this magic country. One of the first places we visited was Tortuguero, a beach by the Atlantic ocean where majority of western hemisphere’s sea turtles hatch. Pretty cool place. We didn’t see any turtles (wrong season), but few broken eggs and empty nests. Pretty cool place why isn’t this place a world heriage? I think it could be for sure. I’ve seen sea turtles when diving on a different occasion and they are very amazing creatures! I’d love to see them hatch one day, maybe this is the perfect place.

There at least is a nice beach, star filled nights and a nice town. And rain, very much rain. Our guide was surprised that it didn’t rain the entire time, cause it often does. Warm tropical rain. We had some, but it was ok.

Butterflies, brown on the outside, blue on the inside

Nasty spider

Leave ants

At Tortuguero we also saw wonderful blue butterflies, green frogs with big eyes they wwere hard to find, but you could hear them every evening by the pond in the hotel area. Pretty cool. There were also pretty nasty spiders. I think they are called banana spiders and are harmless more or less, but I don’t like spiders. They are fascinating, but don’t need to be near me. You know. We saw other spiders as well. Their webs were huge and one was found in the morning by our bungalow. Not nice.

Talking about other bugs I have to mention the leave carrying ants.  Ant after ants was caryying leaves, pretty cool sight. We were told that they have different chambers in their nest and they grow fungus on the leves. If the fungus becames bad only one chamber will be affected and the colony survives. How cool is that!

Last but not lest there were beautiful butterflies in the area. They were fed with pineapple and one landed on Jany’s head.

Jesus-lizzard

Waiting for a fish

An Elvis-haired bird

Another thing that we did in Tortuguero was to go on a cruise in the jungle. The jungle is dense, green and filled with birds, lizards and other creatures. We saw pretty many birds from the very beginning. But also several monkeys playing in the trees, among them spider monkeys, howler monkeys, capucin monkeys and squirell monkeys. We think. They were playing in tree tops, so it was not always easy to see.

What we did see was plenty of different birds. Mostly water birds, but also jays and humming birds. There was always something flying or looking for a fish where ever you looked.

Jungle cruise

Aligator

Iguana

The lizards came also in different sizes and shapes. Jesus lizard was one. It was running on water, and that’s how it got the name. It was hard to spot in the green, but once you saw it you also saw several more. On the shores and in the trees there were iguanas. They seemed to enjoy the sunshine and sat very still or moved as slow. But when they started running, they were fast!

In the water there were also aligators, so swimming was not recomended. They were also hard to spot in the beginning for someone who is not used.

Hanging bridges in the tree tops

Tame parrot

After Tortugero we we went to another area, another climate zone with more animals. Even the vulcano Areal could be another world heritage site. Or not.

Arenal Volcano is an active andesitic stratovolcano in north-western Costa Rica in the district of La Fortuna. Geologically, Arenal is considered a young volcano and the age is estimated to be less than 7,500 years. The volcano was dormant for hundreds of years and exhibited a single crater at its summit, with minor fumaroles activity, covered by dense vegetation. In 1968 it erupted unexpectedly, destroying the small town of Tabacón. (wikipedia)

We went to see the volcano, but we also saw waterfall, where we swam and we walked on hanging bridges, between tree tops.

Vulcano Areal

Do not touch the volcano!

La Fortuna

We visited, of course the town of La Fortuna, called so because no one died during the last eruption. We also went to hot springs and enjoyed the hot water and cold drinks. In the tropics you have to have at least one tropical drink!

To be continued…

//Monika