Tortuguero

From San José we took the bus to the small town of Cariari in the morning, from where we took a second bus to the boat dock in La Pavona. Then we took a boat again for about an hour across the river to the cute little village of Tortuguero. After leaving our luggage at the hotel and briefly enjoying the soothing coolness of the air conditioning, we went for lunch at a beautiful restaurant with a view of the river and the green national park around us. For the rest of the day we leisurely strolled through the town and enjoyed two happy hour cocktails 😁. In the evening we sat on the beach with the incredibly cute puppy who somehow belonged half to our hotel. Later we found a cute baby cat, the perfect end to the day!

Since we had only booked our tours in the national park for the next day, Wednesday was also very relaxed. After it rained heavily in the morning, we didn't go out the door until midday and took a long walk on the beach. We saw a crowd of people in the distance and took a closer look. They had found a newly hatched baby turtle that appeared to have a deformity in its eyes and had washed up after almost making it to the sea. Two employees from the turtle conservatory were also present and explained to us that it was extremely important that the turtles made it into the sea themselves without help. This strengthens their coordination and strength in their small fins, and they also store information about the beach - after all, most turtles eventually return to the beach of their birth in order to lay their eggs there themselves. They had just piled up a mountain of sand for her to keep her from crawling in the wrong direction. After a while we moved on and kept our fingers crossed for little Schildi to make it into the sea. We walked a little further, accompanied by a black Wauzi, and picked up some plastic waste. Even if the quantities were not as large as in other places in the world, it was still a shocking amount. In the evening it was raining heavily again and we were glad that our excursions didn't take place until the next day.

The next morning we set off very early in the sunshine for a canoe paddling tour through the rivers of Tortuguero. We saw three small caimans, birds and iguanas. One of the birds had a duck-like flat blue beak and looked incredibly cute, another had the funny name Chayenne-Ralle - sounds like a bad joke, but that's what it's called 😄. The tour was very nice because we drove calmly through the great atmosphere of the beginning of the day, even if we didn't discover a lot of animals. After we docked again, everyone had breakfast at their hotel - we had our beloved oatmeal with delicious fruit. During breakfast, Jana noticed that the puppy had a very dry nose and put a bowl of water out for him to drink. After that, the Wauzi didn't leave our side, we called him Dobby because of his big ears and he escorted us all the way back to the national park entrance, where we met up with the group again. This time we took a short walk through the forest and Barbara, who led our tour, explained to us about different plants and animals. We saw leaf cutter ants, which, as we recently learned, in addition to the leaf, now and then transport their comrades like a collective taxi. We also saw a few monkeys, lizards, a skeleton of a turtle that had fallen victim to the jaguar and scratch marks from the jaguar on a tree. We met a super friendly couple from Bonn, Nicole and Andre, with whom we chatted for a long time. The two have also been traveling around the world since January and have been enthusiastic divers ever since and, funnily enough, Nicole is also an anesthetist. We had the rest of the day free and spent the afternoon in our beautiful air-conditioned room 😄 In contrast to the previous day, we were really lucky and the sun shone all day, so the cool down was very convenient for us. In the evening we went to the actual highlight of the tour day, of course again escorted by our little friend Dobby. After we had a delicious dinner with Nicole and Andre, we went back to the meeting point with our group in the dark. July to October is turtle season in Tortuguero and the green sea turtles leave the sea after several years to lay their eggs in the sand. It is estimated that it can take up to 30 years for female turtles to come to land for the first time. Not always, but usually this is the beach where they hatched themselves. After that, each green sea turtle only comes every 2-3 years, laboriously digs a very deep hole into which it lays around 100 eggs and then buries them again for an hour to protect them well. Then she goes back into the sea and the little ones are left to fend for themselves. After hatching, 60-70% make it to the sea, but there many become victims of other predators. The adult turtles can be caught on land by a jaguar during this time. All in all, a tricky business as a turtle, but if they stay alive, they stay alive for a really long time!

The national park has very strict rules for turtle tours so as not to disturb the animals. As an observer, you are only allowed to watch after the hole has been dug. So the group waited for the ranger to say that a female had finished building her nest. We only saw the first one crawl back into the water; it quickly changed its mind. So we dashed through the dark forest to another part of the beach, where a second shield had arrived. We arrived just perfectly and were able to observe this unique moment of egg laying in complete silence and awe. The turtles are in a trance-like state during this time and don't notice much around them, so the little light doesn't bother them at all. We took turns with other groups, but were allowed to watch twice in total! Afterwards we watch as the nest was very laboriously dug up again with the fins that were not perfectly suited for this purpose. The turtle developed unexpected strength and the sand flew around, we even got some of it on our feet. Little by little the animals become more and more aware of their surroundings and it was time for us to leave them alone. That was really a very special experience!

The next morning we packed up our backpacks again, secretly fed the sweet baby cat and her mother, escaped before anyone saw us and took the boat back to La Pavona. We took the two buses to San José again, on the way we talked to Janice and Timo from Freiburg and completed our last bus ride of the trip in no time. Philip was very, very happy about that, he had already felt a little sick again and that was our sign that we had had enough of traveling by bus in Latin America 😄 We had gotten a cheap room near the airport for the last night in Costa Rica. We were greeted by two super cute cats, cooked ourselves something small and lay down for a few hours. At half past two the alarm clock rang and we drove to the airport because the next part of the trip was coming up: we were going to the USA!

This ends our time in Latin America, where we were able to speak Spanish so beautifully and visited great places. We saw an incredible amount of animals, a lot of nature, a lot of culture, cold desert, humid rainforest, high volcanoes, deep underwater world - there was a bit of everything! But we can't watch rice and beans anymore and are ready for this next chapter 😜!