Corcovado National Park, Osa, Costa Rica

My girlfriend from California wanted to come down to Costa Rica for a visit again. I told her to come on down and I would meet her at the airport. I could hardly parade her around Quepos with all my flavor of the days we would run into so I decided to go on a trip to the Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula to the South of Quepos/Manuel Antonio. The Osa is a much less developed area and it has a large National Park where you can see scarlet macaws, big cats like jaguars or pumas, lots of monkeys, tropical birds and many other interesting tropical rainforest things.

I met her at the airport and we spent the night at my house. We went to Cafe Aqua Azul because she always liked sitting up on the hill watching the monkeys and birds. Then we flew to Osa the next day. I had booked the trip with a travel agent so everything was planned already. We were met at the airport by a taxi that took us over to the river where we boarded a small boat for a ride to our hotel. There were four other people in our group. One older couple from North Carolina and a couple from the midwest in the States. On the ride down the river we saw lots of birds and some snakes. Of course there were crocodiles along the shore and some swimming out in the current of the river too. I was hoping to see a manatee but we were not lucky enough to find one.

The ride down the river was about an hour long and then we came to the mouth of the river and there were large waves breaking ahead of us. Our boat captain deftly drove our small boat over around and through the crashing waves. It was a bit on the dicey side. One mistake in waves this size and we would have capsized and we would have been swimming in the water with all the crocodiles. He made it look easy the way he slid through this dangerous area. I asked him about it and he told me he has been driving this route for over thirty five years so he was quite familiar with the method to the madness. We followed the coast south for another forty five minutes or so. We could see dolphins playing further offshore. There were fish following in our wake that were jumping out of the water. Our guide told us they were needlefish. Then we motored into a very small bay and he ran the boat straight into the shallows and grounded the boat on the rocky shore. We got out and walked through ankle deep water to get the rest of the way to the beach and they carried our bags for us. We climbed up the hillside to our hotel and checked in. There was one other couple at the hotel already so there was a total of eight guests.

We cleaned up in our rooms and got ready to go eat dinner since the hotel was all inclusive. There were lots of tropical plants growing on the grounds of the hotel and we stopped to look at the chocolate growing on the trunk of its tree. There were also bananas, mangos, papayas, coconuts and tons of flowers growing around us. The dinner was very entertaining as we all got to know a little bit about each other through small talk while we ate. The host explained our options for activities while we were there. All of us wanted to go to the park to hike around and see animals and birds. We booked an all day excursion for the next morning to the park. A boat would pick us up right after breakfast. We spent the night talking and drinking with our new friends before hitting the sack fairly early.

The next morning after a very good filling breakfast we again walked through the ankle deep water to get on the water taxi and we were off to the park. After about an hour we rode the waves into the shore and beached the boat again. We got out and walked to shore with absolutely nothing but jungle everywhere we looked. We were assured that our guide would meet up with us there. While we were there I spotted some scarlet macaws and we all ran up the beach to look at the beautiful scarlet colored parrots playing and eating in a tree right on the beach. Our guide showed up and after the macaws flew off we headed into the jungles for our hike. I was quietly saying, lions and tigers and bears oh my....In the morning we saw lots of monkeys and a few birds. Our guide was getting a little miffed at me because I was finding more things to look at then he was. I have a talent for seeing wildlife that I have had my entire life no matter where I am. I am just observant and I use my ears as much as my eyes to find things. We saw toucans, mot mots, parrots, hummingbirds, deer, sloths, birds birds and more birds, crocodiles, camens, snakes and more. I loved the hike.