Wildlife watching from the balcony

Trip Start Nov 08, 2008
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Trip End Jun 30, 2009


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Where I stayed
Sirena Ranger Station

Flag of Costa Rica  , Province of Puntarenas,
Sunday, June 7, 2009

We were awake at 5am with the howler monkeys. They{re the roosters of the jungle. Their howling is incredible, you can hear them from 5km away. Not only that but the spider monkeys drop fruit onto the roof of the building and the parrots make a right racket. We both had a terrible night. We only had one mosquito net and so we attempted to share a single bunkbed with a plastic mattress. Fatal error. At midnight Paul gave up. It was hot, sticky and uncomfortable and so he gave himself up to the mosquitos and in the morning was covered in enormous itchy bites, poor thing.

Having walked for 8 hours the previous day we couldn{t summon the energy to do anything this morning. But luckily for us, the wildlife comes to you. We literally sat on the ranger station balcony and saw loads without even moving. Spider, squirrel and howler monkeys wandered past in the trees, a family of caoti{s came past playing, toucans and parrots rested next to us, a giant flying grasshopper came to say hello and an anteater nonchalantly strolled along the branches of a nearby tree. It was awesome. And so perfectly lazy.

But no tapir. They{re like a cross between a rhino and an anteater. They are supposed to weigh half a tonne. We saw their footprints but despite hunting high and low, we didn{t see one.

On the way back a couple who were walking behind us said that they{d accidentally came across one sleeping by the beach. We must have walked straight past it! And, they got the shock of their lives when they saw crocs as they crossed the river. I{m pretty glad we didn{t see those. I feel like Indiana Jones.
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