Tortuguero, CR

After our relaxing time at Arenal volcano, we were up eaaarrrlllyyy on Tuesday AM (4:00am to be exact) to head to the airport to fly to the Caribbean coastal town, Tortuguero—translated it’s “The Land of Turtles”. This village is only accessible by boat as it is surrounded by the ocean on one side and canals on the other. You can get there one of two ways: 1 – plane 2 – bus, bus, boat. The former takes 25 minutes and the latter, 7 hours. So we decided to do both so we’d have the chance to check out the country from the air, land, and water :)

We arrived at the airport only to discover that no one else was going to Tortuguero, so it was like we had our own personal flight and pilots :)

*Our plane and our pilot :)*
*Either it’s really bright or we’re really excited!*
 
Once we took off, we stared out the window the whole time looking at the massive city of San Jose below. We flew by Poas volcano, which was cool and before we knew it we were flying over the jungle. Once we saw the ocean and canals we knew we were close. We landed…walked off….others waiting got on the plane and it turned right around and took off again. No such thing as an airport in Tortuguero :)

We arrived at around 7am and it was smokin’ hot & humid!!! Before we headed to our hostel, we took a look at the beach. Sooooo lovely! The Caribbean was a lot warmer than the Pacific was.

Because we started profusely sweating from the humidity, we decided to go to our hostel, drop off our bags and explore. Once we checked in we booked a leatherback turtle tour that started at 10pm….so we had 15 hours to kill :) We walked around, found a place to eat some yummy breaky (Gallo Pinto & smoothies), took in the sites and I snapped some pix….of course :)

*We had the beach front suite. So lovely! It was a GREAT place to stay for the price. It would have been perfect if it had a couple of hammocks for us to chill in…and maybe some AC :)*

*We thought about it!*

Tortuguero is not very big at all, so it didn’t take us long to take in the sites. At about 11ish we went back to our hostel and went for a swim. After that we had a lil’ siesta since the heat was taking a lot out of us. When we woke up a couple hours later we went for some bevies and I snapped some more pix.

We were also planning to trek through Tortuguero National Park. We were told that it cost about $10 to enter the park and we had to rent rubber boots to protect our ankles from snake bites. We looked at the map and decided to go check it out. We walked and walked and walked through the jungle looking for the entrance and I will admit I was pretty freaked out by all of the sounds in the bushes and trees. Not only that, but we were getting ATTACKED by mosquitoes. Eventually we got to an opening and realized it was the entrance to the park. Oops! Good thing we didn’t see any snakes!!!!
After all of that we went for a nice, long walk down the beach.

*We heard some wildlife in the park, but this was the only snapshot of something alive that I actually saw.*
 
 
*Tortuguero has a very Caribbean flare. Bob Marley is heard everywhere, as are the colors red/yellow/red & the scent of Mary Jane.*

CR is well-known for stray dogs roaming the streets and Tortuguero wasn’t any different. When we first arrived we came across this one dog that looked like Cheryl and Pascal’s dog, Jakey Jake. He had a collar on, so I had a feeling he belonged to someone. Anyway…this pooch followed us around and we ran into him again, with two of his friends, while walking down the beach. They played and followed us the whole time. We weren’t sure why because we hadn’t fed them or anything like that. When we decided to go back to our hostel, Jake clone and one little, submissive female doggie followed us. They crashed on our patio and I tried to give them some water. They were quite timid, but eventually drank it when we were far away from it. I don’t think dogs are treated nicely there because when I got a broom to sweep they ran off in fear. When I put the broom back, they came back. We chilled out on the patio for a bit and made our way into the village for some dinner. The doggies followed us the whole way there. The submissive one was getting picked on by all of the other street dogs on our walk, which TOTALLY broke my heart!

Once we got to the restaurant we noticed Jake clone left, but the female sat ever so patiently by the front door. My heart broke again! We think we arrived just when they were about to close because they closed the front door and locked it. They allowed us to stay, which was nice, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the dog outside.

While we were waiting for our dinner this little boy, maybe three, came out of the kitchen and pulled up a chair. He brought two tiny finger puppets with him and he was just going off in Spanish, chatting up a storm. Then he broke out in song and was laughing and playing with his finger puppets. SOOOOOO SOOOOO CUTE! We totally wished we spoke Spanish, so we knew what he was saying. All of a sudden he grabbed the menu and stood up like he was our waiter. He said “something in spanish spanish spanish mango, pina, papaya…” I said mango and he went into the kitchen and returned with two sippy cups for me and Jame. Then he said something in Spanish again. all I understood was “pollo” which is chicken, so we ordered some chicken. He went into the kitchen and returned with two small plastic plates. At this point his mom came to get him, took him into the kitchen and she returned with our “real” dinner. It was super, super cute!! :)

When we left, guess who was waiting outside for us?? ??

That’s right!!!

We went into the store to buy some ice cream because it was still smokin’ hot. She waited for us and followed us again. At one point we thought we lost her, so we sprinted down the dirt road and turned a quick corner. Phew, we lost her. Well, two minutes later guess who came high tailing down the road, her!!!!!

It was about 8:30 when we got back to our hostel, with doggie. I decided to have another nap before our turtle tour. I hoped to wake up and have Jame tell me the dog took off, but nope. She was still there. My heart broke AGAIN!!!!!!!! I knew the locals weren’t fond of strays as they are nothing but a nuisance, but I feared that once we started our turtle tour she would follow us and the guide would beat her or kick her or something to make her take off :(

Just as I anticipated, when we started our tour she followed us. The guide caught on quickly and shoo’d her away. No kicking thank god!! The plan was to walk down the beach while the guide would try to seek out turtle tracks using his red light. I still don’t really know how he could see anything in the pitch black, especially since he only shone his light 4 times. Oh well, we were told that April was still too early and that we only had a 30% chance of seeing something.

About 10 minutes into our walk I looked over my shoulder and who did I see sprinting down the beach??? That’s right!!!! Poochie! I couldn’t believe it! As soon as she saw me she laid down. We continued walking and she ran behind us. When I looked at her again, she stopped again. CRAZY!!! I practically had tears in my eyes! This dog obviously had a connection with us and I couldn’t help but think of ways to get her back to Canada! Eventually she turned around because I think she was thinking “Where the hell are these guys going?” I told Jame that if she was on our patio when we returned OR when we woke up the next morning I would DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately we didn’t see any turtles :( Bummer!!!!! BUT you know how I wanted to see a red eyed frog?? Well, we did at La Paz, but we saw some again near a local resort. I only had my point and shoot, so it is pretty flashy, but it gives you an idea. I think I blinded the poor guy!

 

And then we saw something totally random….nature at its finest! And no, they’re not dead!!! HAHAHAHA!

Three hours of trekking along the Caribbean and no sign of a turtle. A good enough reason for me to go back!!! It was a good workout though, that’s for sure. We got back at about 12:15am and it was still super hot!! Thankfully pooch wasn’t waiting for us!!!!!

We woke up the next morning and had a nice breakfast on our patio overlooking the ocean. Pretty rough, eh? After that, we packed up our things and made our way to the river to catch our boat. We left Tortuguero on a 90 minute boat ride through the canals. We saw some very cool birds, some massive iguanas and even a camen! Unfortunately we were travelling too fast for me to capture any images!

We were dropped off in a small town, where we hopped on a bus for two hours to another small town. There we got on another bus, which took us to San Jose. We spent about 7 hours getting from Tortuguero to San Jose and it was a very cool way to see both rural and urban areas of the country.

When we arrived in San Jose we decided to take a cab back to Kev’s place since it was rush hour and the city buses were jam packed! It took about 40 minutes because of traffic, but it was pretty cheap :) One thing we did see was the president being escorted through traffic by only 2 cops on bikes. Two…that’s it!!!!!

When we got back to Kev’s we went out for dinner and then back to his place to listen to the Canucks game. Quite a few bevies were consumed and I knew the guys were trashed because THEY requested a photo be taken! :) Here’s us posing in Kev’s kitchen about to do a jager bomb. GT’s!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, only one more day in Costa Rica before we had to head home. I’m pretty sleepy now, so I think I will save that post for later. There aren’t any pix for that post, so maybe I’ll get Jame to type that one up :-)

Thanks for checking out the site and pictures :)