Tourism is very big in Costa Rica. Very, very big. And part of tourism is taking tours. Which I did.
One of them was on a boat in the Palo Verde National Park.
A large portion of Costa Rica is set aside as protected areas, in excess of 25% of their land area. They are also into “eco-tourism”, and have a wide variety of ecosystems, with (obviously) oceans on both sides and a volcanic spine down the middle. There are dry areas and rain forests. It is really quite spectacular.
In our case, our resort, the RIU Guanacaste, is on a beach on the Pacific coast. We got our tour through Alex on the Beach. You can arrange things in advance, or talk to Alex (he’s right there on the beach) to set things up. We all could not be happier to have used him.
Our tour guide was Juan Carlos Sotela Méndez, who was fantastic. He knew a lot and, better yet, was a lot of fun to be around. On our way out starting the tour, we stopped to fill a cooler with cervezas (beer). [I should also mention that, on our second tour, the air conditioning on the van really wasn’t working very well. We did OK by opening the windows, but Juan Carlos, on his own initiative, called ahead so that when we stopped at a grocery store, there was a replacement van waiting there for us. Things can sometimes go wrong; what sets aside the good ones is how they fix it. This was a great example of fixing it without even being asked to.]
Our tour started right on the beach, where Juan Carlos immediately spotted this owl in a tree. (I think it’s a tropical screech owl, if I remember correctly.)
Owl
The great thing about guides is that they know what to look for, where, and their eyes are trained to see them.
By the way, upon first meeting me, Juan Carlos was a bit concerned about my being barefoot. I told him I never wore shoes; he thought I was joking. Others of our party tried to convince him, but he was still doubtful. (I guess he is pretty used to American humor—there was a lot of good-natured teasing going on.) But he was convinced when, after we walked down the beach to the van parking lot, I trounced right across the gravel to get into the van. He assured me Costa Ricans wouldn’t care that I was barefoot.
Costa Rica is really pretty. The main roads are good, but there are a lot of gravel and dirt roads, which you need to take to get in to the special spots. This gives you a bit of a feel for the roads.
On the Road
(Note the motorcycle ahead of us.)
Agriculture is also big in Costa Rica. There was a lot of sugar cane. There was just field after field.
A Sugar Cane Field
Here’s a field that is newly planted.
Young Sugar Cane
We also passed a lot of rice fields (who knew?). By the way, they also grow a lot of really nice coffee at the right elevation along the sides of their mountains. I bought some to take home, and it blew away our usual brand.
Along the route we went by a troupe of howler monkeys. Here’s one guy up there.
Howler Monkey
Here’s the best picture I managed to take. It’s a bit washed out because my camera was sitting in the cooled van, and when I took it out into the hot, humid air the lens starting fogging up.
Howlers in the Fruit Tree
The Howler Monkeys were in the tree because it was full of jocotes. (The name comes from the Nahuatl word xocotl, which means “fruit”). There were a few lying on the ground, so I tried them. They were pretty good (but with a lot more pit than fruit).
Here’s one more picture of a howling monkey, courtesy of Heather (Neinast) Codner.
A Prehensile Tail
You can see it using its prehensile tail like another limb. That is one of the differences between Old World and New World monkeys—only New World monkeys have prehensile tails (and of course Old World humans’ tails aren’t prehensile either).
We then arrived at the boat tour, which started along a tributary to the Tempisque River. They recommend tennis shoes, but I think that’s just because they kept getting asked about what people should wear. (The Alex on the Beach website mentions sandals or closed shoes, but again, they’re happy with whatever works for you.) In reality, there wasn’t even much hiking; we were on a boat after all for most of the tour. So bare feet were perfectly fine.
Once on the water we spotted a colony of long-nosed bats. Or, I should say, Juan Carlos spotted them and our boat headed over to take a look.
Fruit Bats
They are all lined up like that in order to take advantage of the shadiest part of the tree trunk.
It was Monkey Morning. From there we found a bunch of white-faced capuchin monkeys in the forest alongside the river.
White-Faced Capuchin Monkeys
We got really close.
Up Close and Personal
Really, really close.
A Bit of Prehensile Action
There were actually two boats (ours and another) snuggled up near the shore. So here’s another monkey on the boat next to us.
On the Edge
About 2 seconds after that shot the monkey jumped from the one boat onto ours. I managed to miss the picture. Sorry about that.
At this point we’re about halfway through the tour. It happened to be the mammal part.
In part 2, I’ll do birds and reptiles.
Ahcuah 
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