Land of Turtles

• Slipperycoconut's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Tortuguero

Trip Start Jan 01, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Ongoing Next
Entry

  Tortuguero, Costa Rica
Thursday, May 10, 2007

Thursday May 10 to Saturday May 12

Tortuguero is a small village on the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. It has no roads and no vehicles and can only be accessed by boat or plane. You can fly from San Jose, the capital, for about $70 one way. Or you can go by land & boat with a tour company for about $60 round trip. Our you can be really cheap like us and do it yourself for about $7 one way. The trip consists of an beautiful bus ride from San Jose - 2 hours through the forest. Then a 30 minute boat ride up the scenic canals and lagunas to the village of Tortuguero. Our *interesting* journey to Tortuguero is described in Frank`s prior posting. If you haven`t read that yet, please do so - learn from our lessons!

After the long bumpy ride from Cariari to La Pavona (during which our bus stopped once for a Banana Crossing), we caught a small ferry (launcha) for the 30 minute canal ride to Tortuguero. On our boat was a Canadian guy who was working at a Turtle and Environmental Conservation place. He told us that a local 13-year old boy was killed a couple days ago by a crocodile in the canal. They havenīt seen they boy nor the crocodile yet, but have nets out to catch it.

When our launcha arrived in Tortuguero, a guy immediatley poked his head inside, held out a helping hand to Frank and said "Are you Francisco?". Frank, perplexed, said Yes. The guy introduced himself as Juan "Vaca" and told us that our friends Jessie and Mark were okay and were going to be able to make it to the ferry ontime to come to Tortuguero.

A Turtle in Tortuguero National Park

He told us that the Colombians were arrested and going to be deported. He then helped us off the boat with our bags, welcomed us to his island, and offered to show us around and find a hotel. It turned out that he was a friend of Adolfo, who worked for the bus company. Adolfo had originally showed us where to catch the bus in Cariari and later accompanied the police to follow our bus to get Mark.

The hotel options in Tortuguero are evenly split. High-end all-inclusive luxury rainforest lodges ($50-200 per person per night) are outside of the main village, set remotely on the lagunas and canals - with the only access by their private boats. The other option is to stay inside the main village at one of the handfull of budget cabinas ($5 - $10 per person per night)

After surveying the half-dozen hotel options in the village, we settled into Cabinas Aracari. We got a clean private room with private bath, double bed, fan, and tiled floors for a mere $7 per person per night. Thatīs a strange thing about so many Central American hotels. The rates they charge are per person, not per room. One day, we just may show them the silliness in this by taking up one room per person (at the same rate) - and use one room to shower in & store clothes in and the other room to sleep in!

The main attraction of Tortuguero is to see the namesake - the giant Sea Turtles! A large section of this part of the Caribbean coast is preserved as a National Park. Of the Eight species of Sea Turtles in the world, 4 of them have chosen Tortuguero as their preferred nesting ground.

Big tree

Each year, thousands of these beautiful giants come ashore to lay their eggs in the safety of the dark at night. Our visit to Tortuguero bordered on the time period that the Leatherback and Green Turtles lay their eggs. For about $10 per person, you can go on a 2 hour guided hike along the beach to search for turtles laying eggs. You should go with a guide, because they use special lights that donīt disrupt the turtles (regular flashlights will scare them away). We planned on doing one of these trips, but heard from other tourists and guides that they had not seen any turtles this week. So we opted to stick with day hikes instead.

We visited the Parque Nacional Tortuguero which is right next to the village. We went on a self-guided muddy trail through the park in search of monkeys, lizards, frogs, snakes, and torantulas. ($7 entrance fee and $1 rubber boot rental). We did hear and see some beautiful loud monkeys and a giant iguana. But to Frank and Markīs disappointment, there were no torantulas and snakes. Later that afternoon, Frank and I returned for a late afternoon hike (about 5pm) again because thatīs when the wildlife is more active. And active they were! We saw a small land turtle, dozens of giant locust-looking things, jesus lizards. Towards the end we both heard a low deep growl and froze in place! I asked Frank if he heard that. He said yes and sped up. I whispered "Wait for me!", ran up and linked arms with him and said "If we walk together weīll look bigger and maybe it will leave us alone!". We were terrified and speed-walked the rest of the way out of the park, occaisionally looking over our shoulders to see if the Jaguar-Killer-Monkey-Monster was still after us. When we finally made it out to the safety of the ranger stations we got a really good laugh at ourselves, even while still shaking nervously!

That night, we continued finishing off a bottle of Rum with Mark & Jessie and playing more card games. The former names of the cardgames were Asshole (a classic college game) and Shithead (taught to us by some Europeans). Because of our encounters in Tamarindo and backpack theft in Cariari, we very unpollitically correctly renamed the card games to Colombian and Buttman.

On our last evening, we found Juan "Vaca", our friendly local guide and told him we wanted to buy one-way ferry tickets down the coast to Moin. He showed up at our hotel later that evening with a girl from the ticket office. If you ever visit Tortuguero - we highly recommend Juan "Vaca" as a guide for anything - he is really friendly and an honest guy. Just ask around town for him.

Next stop: further down the coast to Cahuita, Costa Rica.

Cheers, Kay

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Boat to Tortuguero	Canadian Research Center	Canadian Research Center 2	Canal
Emerging from the jungle and seeing the ocean	Frank on the boat to Tortuguero	Giant Locust and Frank	Giant Locust on a branch
Giant Locust top view	Giant Locusts	Howler Monkey in the treetop	Jesus Lizard
Jesus Lizard again	Kay keeping the bug away	Kay on the boat ride to Tortuguero	Launcha
lizard on the trail	Massive Iguana 1	Massive Iguana 2	Massive Iguana 3
Massive Iguana 4	On the boat to Tortuguero	Puppy Dog hanging out at the dock	Rented boots for the hike
Some canals around Tortuguero	The canals to Tortuguero	Tortugero Beach	Welcome to Tortuguero National Park

Slideshow Print this entry Share Tortuguero hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry