Costa Rica PART 1

So, after months of forwarding planning and years of saving, I find myself in the middle of a tropical rainforest. I am no more than a puma, a neotropical otter or scarlet macaws’ guest and – wow - is their home beautiful.

After a long flight (my first long haul) and an overnight stay in San Jose I took to the sky in a Nature Air plane. The pilots of the tin-can-with-wings were pretty laid back and casually turned up five minutes before our flight. The ride seemed a tad too much for some (mainly the little girl in front of me who threw up into her father’s lap) but the other five people, including myself, were mesmerised by the view. As we soared over mangroves, beaches and the jungle I half expected to hear David Attenborough in my ear.

As we arrived I was hit by a wave of humidity, grabbed my own luggage from the hold and was a greeted by a very smiley and tanned blonde, who I now know to be the lovely Elle, our project coordinator.  Walking down Puerto Jimenez I felt as though I had stepped into the novel Wide Sargasso Sea and it was a very sudden realisation that I was a long way away from home. We were quickly shuffled onto the collectivo, a cattle truck with seats, for an hour into the depths of the jungle where we were met by even more friendly faces and introduced to camp.

Now, I could spend a fair amount of time telling you how the rest of my first day unfolded; how I chose a hammock over a tent, or how I ate stir fry and fried bread for tea. How the howlers are so loud at 4am each morning you contemplate getting a BB gun sent in from home, or how the squirrel monkeys swing from tree to tree as you take a butt naked shower in the middle of the jungle. Or even, perhaps, how the scarlet macaws are my favourite bird (never thought I’d have one of those) but I just don’t have enough space on the page.

All the staff are incredible and instinctively passionate about the nature around them, and the animals they specialize in. Helen for instance, cries out when she sees her ‘babies’ the capuchins, despite seeing them a hundred times, and Nathan is astounded by the coolness of a type of Iguana he’s never seen before whilst on our night walk, and Sarah affectionately calls the turtles ‘crazy’ when she looks at their lopsided tracks and false lays. Meanwhile Elle inspires me with her creativity and experience of the world. All of their knowledge is completely beyond me, but it’s an honour to learn from them all and contribute to a world of science that my eyes are only just being opened to.

Now for the exciting part, yesterday was my best day by far, despite my crippling homesickness! I woke up at 5am ready for my first turtle patrol, not expecting to see much as the season is currently in a lull, so I found myself just enthusiastic to see the beach. I was not disappointed. The rainforest meets the black sand with a perfect line of palm trees, the waves reach three metres at least and roar as they crumble onto each other whilst pelicans skim the water top. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at a desktop background on a computer or standing in the real thing, the experience was surreal! We walked down the beach looking for turtle tracks and to our surprise we found nine green turtle tracks, and whilst seven were false lays, two had nested, which means that in 45-55 days time we’ll be greeted with hatchlings. Whilst this may seem a lot, only 1 in 1000 hatchlings will survive to maturity, and it isn’t until they’re 26 that the females can start nesting.

Once we’d recorded all of the turtle tracks, and had lost half our body weight in sweat (grim I know) we took a dip in a lagoon, which is situated between the rainforest and the sand and is host to a crocodile! I was reassured before diving in with the words “if you see a croc, get out as fast as you can!” Comfortingly I heard no ticking noise and returned to camp rather merrily although exhausted.

Despite being ‘knackered’ (a phrase that the American girls on camp just can’t get use to us English folks saying) I went out and got annihilated by the local guys at football to the soundtrack of thunder and lighting, although no rain, which means the Osa is particularly hot and humid.

After a lovely dish of ratatouille for dinner I headed out on a night walk with the all-knowing Nathan, Sam who I’d travelled with and Sarah, a very enthusiastic American girl (who also is a great chef). Our aim was to see a puma, well at least everyone else was dying to, I on the other hand am in no rush to come face to face with a puma. As we trekked through the pitch dark jungle we were confronted by an iguana, a cute guy whose defence mechanism was along the lines of ‘if I stay as still as I possibly can then you can’t see me’, a spider that catches its prey by dropping a net on it as it flies by and many other creepy crawlies.

And then came the big moment…

Nathan pushed me back and ushered for us to retreat as a venomous Fer-de-Lance snake slithered its way in front of our path. A Fer-de-Lance, I had learnt only hours earlier, is the deadliest snake in the Osa Pensiula, one bite will make you bleed from your eyes and without an anti-venom, you’d be dead in four hours or less! Our initial plan was to wait for it to move off the track but the Fer-de-Lance was unwillingly to cooperate. Instead as it veered to the left, Nathan crossed past it on the right. Just as it was my turn to do the same, the snake noticed our lights and went from a relaxed position to its strike position in less a second. With my adrenaline racing, I carefully and slowly managed to shimmy across, staying as close to the edge of the right hand side of the path as possible. Once we’d all gone past, we headed back to camp to crash into our hammocks and come to terms with our new fear of snakes on any midnight toilet trips!

Week one, Costa Rica, what an introduction!