From our airbnb home base, we were able to take three excursions into different parts of the Costa Rican jungle. The first was an unexpected one. Miguel, the caretaker of the airbnb knocked on our door our first morning and offered to take us on a walk.
We donned rubber boots from a selection by the front door and followed him past his hut and down the hill and along a path by the river. It was hot, sticky and pretty muddy in many places. It became evident that he was trying to find us some sloths but they weren’t in their usual trees by the river so we returned to the house over some open fields. Along the way, he pointed out various trees and showed us a fruit that was secreting a white sticky substance that he indicated would be very irritating to the skin. With his limited English and our limited Spanish, much of our communication was through pantomime, but we got the message -- don’t touch or eat that fruit. I was hot and thirsty when we got back to the house and Miguel gave us a delicious treat - he cut fresh coconuts from a tree in the yard and opened one end so we could slurp the liquid straight from the shells. It was most refreshing.
The next day, we made arrangements to join a tour in the Selva Biological Reserve for the afternoon. Our guide, Jorge, carried a tripod with a spotting scope which he used periodically to help us see things up close. The first were some iguanas perched high in a tree.
We also saw peccaries foraging on the grounds.
As we walked through the jungle, Jorge showed us different species of plants and trees, explained the difference between primary and secondary jungle, pointed out insects, lizards and birds, and told us about the complex interrelationships among various life forms in the jungle. He seemed to know about everything. We were fascinated by a long trail of leaf cutter ants and we were lucky enough to glimpse some spider monkeys swinging through the tree branches.
On the way back to our starting point, I glimpsed a poison dart frog disappearing into foliage on the ground. Jorge said that during the wet season, they would be all over the place - hundreds of them.
Again, we were hot and sweaty after traipsing through the jungle reserve and went back to our airbnb to have a cold shower.
The next morning, we had a lazy breakfast and did some bird watching from our veranda. I couldn’t identify all of them but we saw hummingbirds, toucans, parrots, orioles, woodpeckers, and some tiny ground hopping birds -- yellows, reds, blues, and shiny black ones.
In the afternoon, we drove about an hour to La Fortuna to an ecological themed adventure park featuring zip lining through the canopy and other ways to experience the jungle. We were there for a horse trip to a spectacular waterfall.
The description of the trip said there would be a 15 minute walk to the waterfall from the end of the horse trail. Well, that “walk” include a descent down about 600 steep stairs. After getting thoroughly hot and sweaty, taking a dip in the cool pool below the waterfall was extremely refreshing.
Our wet bathing suits helped keep us a bit cooler on the way back up the 600 steep stairs but it was a hard climb. At the top, we changed out of our bathing suits and retrieved our horses for the ride back to the barns.
After several days enjoying our riverside retreat in Costa Rica, we were reluctant to leave such an idyllic spot, but we were off to new adventures in Peru next.
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