Costa Rica Day 3, March 26

We were up early for breakfast and a 6:30 departure to Corcovado National Park and our tour of the rainforest. Both hot and cold breakfasts were available. The choices of hot breakfasts included French toast or typico (I have no idea how to spell it). Tebs, our host for the day, explained that typico was eggs any style with beans and rice and a tortilla. Additionally, one could just have eggs and toast. Over on the bar, there was yogurt; granola; bananas; a fruit plate of watermelon, outstandingly sweet and juicy pineapple, and papaya; coffee (no decaf), and an assortment of teas (no green). I ordered typico with scrambled eggs. The eggs were at the perfect point between snotty and dry. The corn tortilla was freshly made. The typico was a mix of rice and black beans. It needed hot sauce, which was on the table. I had black tea.

La Paloma is an ecotourist resort. They try to live lightly on the land. Thus, they have refillable water bottles on loan to guests. The first day, they even filled them for us.

Promptly at 6:30, we met our guide, a young man with that common Latino name, Walter. No kidding. Not Jose or Antonio or Julio. Walter. Walter wore knee-high rubber boots. I think of them as foot saunas. How long would it be until his feet dissolved in this heat? We walked down the hill and got in the boat.

A short time later, we landed at Corcovado, the largest rainforest reserve in Costa Rica. We were barely on the shore when Walter took off to the trees next to the picnic area where we’d waded ashore. It was a band of capuchin monkeys.

Capuchin

We started our tour by walking along a beach studded with rocks that provided a testament to Costa Rica’s volcanic past.

The beach

One characteristic of rainforests is epiphytes, a word that literally means “on top of a plant.” The plants spend their whole life growing on another plant, never having roots in the soil. The first epiphyte we saw was an orchid called lady of the night.

Lady of the night

Walter pointed out some very tall trees than might be a hundred years old and 40 m high. That would be the height of a 12 story building. Very tall indeed.

Tall trees

Coconuts are water dispersed. The fruit is adapted to float in sea water without the salt harming the embryo. Coconuts have naturally spread all around the tropics. It was amazing for me to see even one sprouted coconut, and they were everywhere.

Coconut sprouts. These were about knee high

We were visiting the forest during the dry season. There were a few deciduous trees standing bare, but most trees were evergreen. The big trees had buttresses as an adaptation to growing in very wet soils. It helps keep them from tipping over. It is hard to believe when surrounded by so much plant growth, but the soils here are quite poor. All of the nutrients are tied up in biomass. When a leaf drops, especially in the wet season, it rots almost immediately, and the nutrients are sucked up by another plant. I quickly discovered that a consequence of this was that you had to watch your feet. There were roots all over the place. As much as I wanted to be looking up at the trees, lianas (vines), and epiphytes, I learned to walk, stop, and then look up.

Buttresses

And then there’s strangler figs. Walter explained that even though they killed their host trees, they were important in the forest because they are in fruit year-round, providing a constant source of food. Also, when the host tree dies, it will eventually fall down and open a light gap, allowing light-tolerant plants to grow. This process adds diversity to the forest. The strangler figs are dispersed by birds. They germinate in the canopy and grow down to the soil. Weird.

Strangler figs wrapped around the trunks of the larger trees, most clearly visible on the left. Diane is taking the picture. Walter is at the right

The awesome experiences I had on this tour is practically without number. I saw, in person, many things I studied in graduate school. One of the biggest thrills was the leaf-cutter ants. There they were, tiny little things carrying big (relatively) chunks of leaves in a parade down a tree and across the forest floor. It was just like National Geographic. Words cannot describe how I felt.

Leaf cutter ants

Shortly after that, we passed a swarm of army ants. “Watch your step,” Walter said.

Army ants swarming the stick

The trail led back to the beach. We saw a coati (co-ah-tee), a relative of the raccoon, nosing around where the forest met the sand.

Coati

We went back into the forest to complete the loop back to the picnic area. The boat crew and Walter set out quite a spread of bread, cheese, not-very-cold cuts (they had been in a cooler), pasta salad, tuna salad, glass bottles of soft drinks (mostly Coke), watermelon, and pineapple. I ate too much. Again.

We had some down time during lunch. You can imagine that it took some time to set up and take down the lunch food. We walked down to the nearby creek where we were lucky enough to see a tiger heron hunting.

Tiger heron

Near the restrooms (which flushed, by the way), there was a cashew tree. Just one more thing I was seeing for the first time.

Cashew

While eating lunch, I noticed a tree nearby that was absolutely covered with bromeliads, another kind of epiphyte.

Branch covered with bromeliads

Just before our afternoon hike, Walter called our attention to an anteater climbing up a tree. I was noticing that I was getting quite a lot of pictures of animal butts as they walked away from me.

Anteater

In the afternoon, we walked along the creek to a scenic waterfall.

By the waterfall

Perhaps the best moment of the day was swimming in the cool water by a smaller waterfall. After another sweaty day, it was wonderfully refreshing. The feeling didn’t last long, though.

Terry swimming by a smaller waterfall

We had a rough boat ride back. I took a shower and put on fresh clothes for dinner. Terry and I sat on the deck and watched a sloth in an acacia tree. It moved its head slowly from one side to the other. The pictures didn’t turn out. The light was wrong.

For supper, we had lentil soup followed by a green salad. It seemed like there was a chicken option and a fish option every night. We made our choice in the morning for that evening. Today I opted for the chicken breast with olives, capers, and fig. It was served with braised cucumbers (better than I expected) and sautéed plantains (which I liked a lot). Dessert was banana cream pie.

I was ready for bed at 8:30. My brain was full of all I’d seen and learned. My body was exhausted.