Costa Rica 2024

March 29th, 2024 - Next destination: Corcovado

Short­ly before we left, I took a pic­ture of our lodge with the drone:

The larg­er build­ing at the bot­tom right is the resort’s restau­rant, our casita was the mid­dle one on the left. After break­fast, we con­tin­ued in our Mon­tero 4x4 to Cor­co­v­a­do. We drove along the Car­retera inter­amer­i­cana again. The weath­er was a lit­tle bet­ter, so the drones were in use again. The pho­to was tak­en at an alti­tude of 3,200m above sea lev­el - it’s amaz­ing that such dense for­est can still sur­vive at such heights:

We drove on to our next des­ti­na­tion, Cor­co­v­a­do Nation­al Park on Drake Bay. The approx. 200km dri­ve took us along very wind­ing and steep roads from an alti­tude of 3,300m down to the Pacif­ic. It was 12 degrees Cel­sius at the high­est point in the morn­ing and 34 degrees at our des­ti­na­tion in Sierpe with high humidity.

This was our final stop for the day, as you can only get fur­ther into the Cor­co­v­a­do Nation­al Park by boat. We were already expect­ed there and parked our rental car. There is a large jet­ty in Sierpe, from where we took the boat across the Rio Sierpe to our lodge, Ran­cho Cor­co­v­a­do, at 11:30 am. As we still had some time before the boat left, we had some snacks in a restau­rant at the jet­ty. You should­n’t swim in the Rio Sierpe:

Just in time at 11:30 a.m., our boat set off for Ran­cho Cor­co­v­a­do. As the boat began its jour­ney, Andrea spot­ted two scar­let macaws in an almond tree, which were one of the main motives for our vis­it to Corcovado.

So we’ve already done that 😉

We sat on bench­es in the boat and could­n’t lean against any­thing. When we left the riv­er delta and entered the Pacif­ic, the cap­tain turned up the speed and the rest of the jour­ney was extreme­ly bumpy. We were sit­ting right at the front and the boat kept bang­ing hard on the water due to the waves.

After about a 1-hour boat trip, last­ly on the ocean, we arrived at our accom­mo­da­tion, the Ran­cho Cor­co­v­a­do Lodge, and real­ized that there was no jetty 😳.

So it was time to take off our shoes and walk through the shal­low water to the beach.

Final­ly back on sol­id ground, we were greet­ed by the very kind man­ag­er Julia. With a wel­come drink in our hands (cool coconut water), we were briefly explained the arrange­ments and received our room keys. We had very nice rooms with a bal­cony fac­ing the beach. You could hear the sound of the sea and the waves crash­ing on the beach.

We were then expect­ed for a very tasty lunch. Due to the remote­ness of the loca­tion, we had again booked full board at the Ran­cho Cor­co­v­a­do. After lunch and a short break to relax in our air-con­di­tioned room, we went for a walk along the beach, where the water was pleas­ant­ly warm. We then launched the drones at sunset.

We then had din­ner at around 6:30 pm. After that we went to bed quite ear­ly, tomor­row we start a snor­kel­ing tour at 7:15 am 🤿.

March 30th, 2024

We all slept well and met for break­fast at 6:30. At 7:15 we met our snor­kel­ing guide and fel­low snorkel­ers at the meet­ing point. From there, we took the boat across the Pacif­ic to Isla del Caño for more than an hour.

Isla del Caño is a small island off the Pacif­ic coast of Cos­ta Rica, around 16 kilo­me­ters from the Osa Penin­su­la. It is known for its extra­or­di­nary under­wa­ter world and is part of the Isla del Caño Bio­log­i­cal Reserve. The island itself is dense­ly forest­ed and has a vari­ety of trop­i­cal plants, but its main attrac­tion lies beneath the sur­face of the water.

Around the island there is a nature reserve that is strict­ly pro­tect­ed by rangers. On arrival, we passed a ranger boat and were giv­en an inten­sive intro­duc­tion to the art of snor­kel­ing and the local rules by our guide (the last time I snorkeled was when I was still at school 🤔).

In order to be clear­ly vis­i­ble, snor­kel­ing is only per­mit­ted with a eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able life jack­et. It was not allowed to leave the group led by the guide. All of this was metic­u­lous­ly mon­i­tored by the rangers dri­ving around in boats!

Then we went into the sea. It was great to watch the many col­or­ful fish in the reef near the shore. How good that I had bought a water­proof case for my iPhone and tak­en it with me. With a short break on the beach at Isla del Caño, we dived at two loca­tions for about 45 min­utes each.

When I got back on the boat after the first div­ing tour, it hap­pened: I lost my iPhone in the water. I had almost writ­ten it off, but after some search­ing our guide found it on the seabed, dived down and brought it back up. Here is a pic­ture of our guide in action:

As a reward, he received a gen­er­ous tip at the end of the tour.

The high­light of the snor­kel­ing tour, how­ev­er, was observ­ing the numer­ous tur­tles liv­ing there:

It was a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence, but also quite exhaust­ing. After anoth­er one-hour dri­ve back, we arrived back at our hotel com­plete­ly exhaust­ed. As scar­let macaws had been spot­ted in the trees on the beach short­ly before­hand, we went for anoth­er long walk along the beach.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we did­n’t spot any more of the beau­ti­ful birds. After­wards we all met up again in the hotel restau­rant for lunch. Our man­ag­er Julia invit­ed us into her office at the entrance to the restau­rant, where she then showed us a Black-mandibled Tou­can (Ram­phastos ambigu­us) sit­ting in a palm tree right in front of her win­dow, eat­ing some dates with great plea­sure. This cre­at­ed a lux­u­ry prob­lem for ani­mal pho­tog­ra­phers: the bird was sim­ply too close. 😉

We then relaxed in our air-con­di­tioned rooms and enjoyed a local­ly rec­om­mend­ed trop­i­cal cock­tail with coconut, a Coco-Loco, in the after­noon. It con­tained local rum (cacique, the Brazil­ian ver­sion is cachaça) and was very tasty.

In the evening, anoth­er beau­ti­ful sun­set was on the hori­zon, so we launched the drones again:

March 31st, 2024

This morn­ing we went on one last guid­ed hike in the Cor­co­v­a­do Nation­al Park. We set off ear­ly in the morn­ing at 6:00 a.m. with our guide Manuel for a 20-minute boat ride to the ranger sta­tion, where our back­packs were metic­u­lous­ly checked (plas­tic, knives, tobac­co etc. were pro­hib­it­ed). Once again, we were warned about croc­o­diles. The nation­al park may only be entered under the guid­ance of an expe­ri­enced guide.

Then we set off on the stren­u­ous hike into the park with 31° C and high humid­i­ty. First we looked for the scar­let macaws again and found them quite quick­ly. We fol­lowed their loud cries and found them in the almond trees on the shore - almonds are their favorite food.

Then we con­tin­ued into the dense jun­gle. First of all, we spot­ted lots of mon­keys in the trees:

But there was also a lot else to see, here is a small selection:

After a mid­day pic­nic, we set off with Manuel one last time, as two tapirs had been spot­ted. We found them too:

We then took the boat back again. We were all sweat­ing pro­fuse­ly after the stren­u­ous tour and treat­ed our­selves to a cold beer after a refresh­ing shower.