Costa Rica, Day 5

Day 5: Today was our canoe day. We hadn’t planned this before we left, but we read about it some and it seemed like a nice addition to our tour itinerary. Plus we had some free time to fill up. I got up in the morning and was briefly paranoid about what time it was. See, U.S. cell phones don’t work in costa rica, so we left ours behind. The only thing we had to tell time by, then, was the bed clock, and that was prone to getting reset by power outages. Turned out we were fine, though, as we had our same riceandbeans breakfast and got picked up by the tour company and driven off to the river where we’d be canoeing.

At the river, they showed us how to paddle and steer. I’ve been in canoes before, but Jess is the real expert, so she took the rear, steering position. Once we figured out how best to communicate directions, we were experts on the water. There was a swiss family that was on the tour with us, and I don’t mean to brag, but we were TOTALLY BETTER THAN THEM.

The tour was beautiful, relaxing, and peaceful. Every once in a while we would spot some monkeys or birds from our boat, and the guide was very educational and informative. He always knew some-or-other interesting tidbit about the plants and animals we were seeing. My favorite was spotting a young crocodile sunning itself on the river bank, and his explanation about a specific kind of tree. Evidently it had evolved holes and trails inside it so that it made an ideal house for ants. The ants, in exchange, defended the tree against potential predators. Very cool. We even made a stop where the guides went off into the woods and found some poison dart frogs for us. Only dangerous if you have a cut on your hands. They were tiny, bright, and a real treat. They put them back when we were done.

We also picked up a hitchhiker at some point during our trip. A grasshopper-shaped bug with a short body and HUGE legs dropped into our boat at some point, and hung out with us as we went down the river. We thought he was gone while we took a break on the river bend, but it turns out he was hiding out in Jessie’s life vest. Harmless, though, but funny.

We ended the tour with lunch, tortillas and fruit, and saw some leaf-cutter ants hard at work, as well as some really strange-looking caterpillars. The rest of the day was for resting, pretty much. We went out and booked a second zip-line tour for the next day, our last in La Fortuna. A few minutes after we left, it started POURING rain, and didn’t let up all night. We had an early dinner and then relaxed in our hotel room, eventually falling asleep to the sounds of rain on a metal roof.

Oops! I made the movies in the wrong order. I'll make one for this post in just a bit...okay, its done!



-N