Tortuguero
Sadly, but with great excitement, we left the Carribean towns we came to adore and made our way up north to Tortuguero. We opted for the more expensive route of taking a 4 hour canal boat ride from Moin, instead of the bus. It was well worth the extra money though, as that canal tour was sweet. It felt like we had warped into an old tarzan movie, with all the vines, trees and wildlife that crept along the shores...
Tortuguero also has this "end of the world" feeling since you can only get there by boat and it doesn´t have any cars, or easy access to the outside world. We settled in at a great hostel, La Casarona and quickly felt right at home.
We ran into a dutch couple there, Natosha and Hanz who we´d met on the bus in Manzanillo and decided that we would hike Tortuguero Mountain with them that afternoon. We were suckered into using this tour guide named Gin, who ended up being a total RIPOFF! We pretty much hiked to the top and then back down, without more than a few tid bits here and there about the wildlife around us. I don´t think he offered one thing we hadn´t already seen or noticed without him... neeless to say we were all a bit peeved at giving him our money at the end of the hike. It was an amazing view at the top though, and we got to wear these fun rubber boots and play in the mud, so that made up for some of it!
The following morning, the four of us also decided to do a 6am canoe tour, and this made up for the hike. Our tour guide, Andres, was amazing... he taught us so much about their national forest, the trees, plants, and wildlife. We saw so many species of birds it was crazy, egrets, herrons, toucans, eagles, falcons, some I can´t even remember or pronounce. We saw turltes, Caimens (small crocodiles), monkeys, sloths, and an iguana up high in a tree. It was maginal being in this canoe sliding in and out of canals, going into the forest on the water and looking up at the tall trees above, it was out of this world! :D
Tortuguero also has this "end of the world" feeling since you can only get there by boat and it doesn´t have any cars, or easy access to the outside world. We settled in at a great hostel, La Casarona and quickly felt right at home.
We ran into a dutch couple there, Natosha and Hanz who we´d met on the bus in Manzanillo and decided that we would hike Tortuguero Mountain with them that afternoon. We were suckered into using this tour guide named Gin, who ended up being a total RIPOFF! We pretty much hiked to the top and then back down, without more than a few tid bits here and there about the wildlife around us. I don´t think he offered one thing we hadn´t already seen or noticed without him... neeless to say we were all a bit peeved at giving him our money at the end of the hike. It was an amazing view at the top though, and we got to wear these fun rubber boots and play in the mud, so that made up for some of it!
The following morning, the four of us also decided to do a 6am canoe tour, and this made up for the hike. Our tour guide, Andres, was amazing... he taught us so much about their national forest, the trees, plants, and wildlife. We saw so many species of birds it was crazy, egrets, herrons, toucans, eagles, falcons, some I can´t even remember or pronounce. We saw turltes, Caimens (small crocodiles), monkeys, sloths, and an iguana up high in a tree. It was maginal being in this canoe sliding in and out of canals, going into the forest on the water and looking up at the tall trees above, it was out of this world! :D
posted by Heather at
1:03 PM
2 Comments:
Pictures are amazing! Beautiful colors! WoW!
By
Anonymous, at 1:56 AM
I did Tortuguero, too, although flew from SJ there and took the canal trip down to Puerto Limon. The weird thing is, you mentioned you stayed in a hostel and there were guides; when I was there there was absolutely no place to stay. It was an outpost, not even a town, and the 3 or so of us who'd gotten off the plane slept in these abandoned boats that had washed up on the shore! But I remember loving the monkeys, etc. too on the way down. Agreed - on the CR tourism thing. It's a bit much.
By
Anonymous, at 6:49 AM
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