These posts are certainly a bit delayed, but now that I finally have a slower week of school work, I wanted to go ahead and put together a few blog posts with some of my pictures and stories from Costa Rica! I was there for an incredible two weeks in early January with my Field Ecology class and our wonderful guide Pedro from Tayra Travel. We traveled around much of Costa Rica to observe several of the country's ecosystems, taking detailed field notes about the species present and general ecology of each site. Over the next week or two, I'll make five posts about the five places we visited. First up: Rio de Suenos!
We arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica on January 2nd, and made our way south along the Pacific coast. We actually saw the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean from our plane that morning and the sun set over the Pacific from the van that evening- not a bad day! On our way, we stopped at the so-called 'Crocodile Bridge' over the Tarcoles River at sunset (pictured above). It did indeed live up to its name-- we saw more than 20 crocodiles under the bridge! The other highlight of the evening was seeing a pair of Scarlet Macaws flying overhead.
We eventually arrived at the Rio de Suenos House owned by Albright College. Rio de Suenos is located in southwest Costa Rica, near Coronado. We did some bird-watching around the house, and went hiking along several nearby roads and trails. Some of my favorite sightings were Yellow-throated Toucans, Montezuma Oropenolas, and Crimson-fronted Parakeets, as well as a group of white-faced capuchin monkeys on one of our hikes! On one of our long hikes up a nearby hill, we could hear howler monkeys calling.
On January 3rd, we hiked up a steep dirt path through the tropical forest. After crossing two rivers, scrambling up several extremely steep stretches of trail, and pulling each other up an eroded, muddy drop-off in the rain, we arrived at an absolutely stunning waterfall. After one last steep, rocky climb downward (featuring several poison dart frogs) that involved ducking under one overhang and scrambling on all fours (or at least, my uncoordianted self doing it on all fours...) we made it down to swim in the pool under the waterfall. It was a fantastic day!
Another fun stop was Playa Ventana, a picture-perfect tropical beach about 20 minutes away from Rio de Suenos. There were two caves leading to the water-- both were basically long tunnels, and the one pictured above opened up to a larger chamber on the inside. They flood at high tide- closed anemones and tubeworms were visible on the walls- but the tide was fairly low when we were there. I was also delighted by the countless tiny hermit crabs on the beach.
Hiking around Rio de Suenos
The Rio de Suenos house. Not pictured- the glass shower door that opened inwards but had the handle on the outside, creating a quite successful trap until we tied a rope to the handle and rigged it to pull the door open from the inside.
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