Costa Rica 1 Tortuguerro

Welcome to my Costa Rica travel story. I'll do a series of short entries with fun pictures and stories.

Chapter 1: Tortuguerro

After an interesting stay at the SanJose Tennis Club, Ryan and I were off to a national park on the north eastern tip of Costa Rica. This national park is a series of rivers, rainforests and wetlands connected by canals. There are no roads here. The canals were dredged in the 50s so the Costa Ricans could haul out the giant mahogany trees for the global lumber industry. After the virgin growth forest was cut down, secondary growth forest takes its place. Secondary growth rain forest in this area is thick (and I mean REALLY thick) jungle. Later as the trees grow, the forest canopy rises up nd blocks out the sun. In a few hundred years only 5% of the sunlight will reach the forest floor.

Funny Story 1a: On my first day in TTG I was woken up at 4:30 by terrible low howling and thrashing in the trees around my little tree house thing. I was very scared because whatever was in the trees sounded like 15 bears! I woke up Ryan and said "OMG what the hell is that noise outside the windows?" He said in a sleepy un concerned voice "it' a dog howling. Go back to bed". To which I replied "What the hell kind of dog crashes through the trees?" We found out it was two families of howler monkies that came to visit the camp and throw fruit at our cabin thing.

Funny Story 1b: Later that same day a giant palm branch broke off a tree and almost flattened me. Then even later, a monkey was throwing guava fruit at me.

Funny Story 2: At one point I saw a tiny blue crab climbing a tree. Did you guys know about tree crabs?