Tortuguero

Tortuguero National Park is located in the Limón Province of northeastern Costa Rica. It is located in a tropical climate, is very humid, and receives up to 250 inches of rain a year. The park has incredible biological variety due to the existence within the reserve of eleven different habitats, including rainforest, swamps, beaches, and lagoons. 

Tortuguero is along the Caribbean Sea, and it is best known for it's high population of sea turtles that come to shore to lay their eggs. Here's another cool part- Tortuguero is one of the most remote places in Costa Rica. It is only accessible by boat or by plane! There are no cars in Tortuguero. 

To get to Tortuguero, we drove through San Jose (during which Travis drove the wring way down a One Way street and had to pull up on a curb to let all of the cars zoom by. Haha minor details...), and then drove on to the small town of Cariari. We stayed in a quite sketchy hotel called Hotel Central during which the lady owner asked if our car had an alarm.

We woke up early the next morning and made the hour and a half drive to Pavona, which is where the docks are located to get on boats to Tortuguero. We drove through farmland and alongside groves and groves of banana trees over an unpaved road covered with potholes for about an hour. When we reached the docks, we parked the car for the night and then boarded a long wooden boat that was about a foot out of the water. We rode on the boat for about an hour through curving and muddy jungle rivers (and in the pouring rain) until reaching our destination- the village of Tortuguero.

Upon seeing Tortuguero, I was expecting something a little... more. Perhaps it's because Tortuguero's only source of revenue and only purpose is for tourism. Tortuguero village was founded in 1940 solely as a place for tourists, and it still serves that purpose. There are 15 hotels and over 10 lodges that all offer canoe/kayak tours in the rivers, hikes through the rainforest, and sea turtle watching at night. 

Nevertheless, there were no towering hotels or fancy restaurants. The buildings were wooden and run down, the "roads" were simple foot pathways in the mud. Though it was a touristy place, you were living up close and personal with the locals. We meandered through little alleyways by little homes, kids going to school, boys playing pick up soccer games. It was actually a really neat experience to be living right along side the locals, whose main purpose was to serve us, the tourists. 

After checking in to a hotel (we stayed at Miriam 2, which was right along the Caribbean Sea), the weather had cleared and opened up to blue skies! So, we jumped in a six person canoe with a guide and paddled along the river for three hours. We paddled through the reeds, along the shore, and in narrow little passage ways. It was truly a unique experience, as it was much closer than we ever could have gotten in a motorized boat. 

We saw lots of wildlife during our canoe trip! The kingfisher bird, beautiful bright blue butterflies, and a green-backed herring. We got two feet away from a sleeping cayman crocodile, watched spider monkeys and howler monkeys swing from the trees, held a freshwater turtle that was the sjze of a dinner plate, and stared into the eyes of a spoonbill bird. We saw tons of iguanas hiding in the leaves, and even got to see a Jesus Christ Lizard run on the water! It was for a split second ,but it was something I never thought I'd see in my life! So neat! 

After our canoe, we donned black rain boots (it was the rules) and went on a three hour hike through the National Park. The hike was kind of miserable... mainly because we were wearing these uncomfortable boots, it was hot, and the trail was boring. You basically just walk along the coast of the Caribbean Sea for two kilometers, and then you turn around and walk back. We did get to see lots of ants on the trail- those big red fire ants carrying big green leaves. It reminded me of the ants in the beginning of the Lion King. 

After our hike, I crashed in one of the hammocks outside of our hotel and fell asleep listening to the waves of the Caribbean Sea breaking on the shore. We later walked through some souvenir shops and went swimming in the Caribbean! It was neat to swim in the Pacific Ocean one day, and the very next day be swimming in the Caribbean Sea!

That night, we went on our sea turtle tour!!! First of all, the night sky was clear of clouds, so there were tons and tons of stars overhead! Beautiful! I think I spent more time staring at the sky than anything else during the tour. We walked along the beach in the dark with a guide until we came upon some sea turtles! We got to see two different species tonight- Leatherbacks and Green Backs.

We saw one turtle covering her eggs with sand, another turtle camouflaging her nest, another turtle returning to the sea, and we saw a turtle actually laying eggs! Literally! I got to stand a couple feet from a giant sea turtle (1.5 meters in length!!), and watch her eggs fall into the nest! INCREDIBLE! Certainly a once-in-a-lifetime moment! I also liked seeing all of the turtle tracks on the beach, left behind by the turtles who have come on to the beach to lay eggs or have returned to the sea after laying eggs. Fun fact: sea turtles lay eggs every six years, and when they lay their eggs, they do so twice that year. 

Some tourists are lucky enough to see the turtle eggs hatch and watch the little baby turtles scurry to the ocean. We weren't in Tortuguero during the hatching time, but it was still super super neat to see the sea turtles laying eggs! Haha what shocked me most was how big they were! Absolutely amazing :)