Corcovado continued.

We awoke the next day bright and early and met up with Everest and the other two tourists. The were a nice couple from Spain--unfortunately the did not speak English. I only say unfortunately because this meant that Everest conducted the tour in Spanish. I can understand most of what people say--getting better every day--but Isaac is still not able to follow conversations so well. So he had to rely on my poor translations. It actually wasn´t so bad.

The boat ride on the way out contained some excitement. A large cluster of brown boobies hunting was a signal to Everest that there were probably dolphins in the area. Indeed while we didn´t see too many, we did get a glimpse of a few fins. Kind of a bonus. La Sirena Station in Corcovado --our destination--is a 1 1/2 hour boat ride from Drake Bay. Most of that time is spent travelling past a ridiculously long stretch of beach--something like 29kms with no people. Crazy. After some wild wave dodging by our boat captain, we landed on the beach near Sirena. Our walk to the station brought us some fresh puma tracks, a guan, and I´m sure some other stuff that I can´t remember. Hopefully I will be able to relate the highlights of the day at least.



We arrived at the station after our morning hike. Everest went off to perform some magic with the ranger and came back to tell us that we would be able to stay. Yay--sorry I can´t get the exclamation point or the parenthesis to work on this computer. We set up our tent and were off on another hike.

Rather than try to give a blow by blow, the exciting points were seeing all species of monkey--white faced, howler, spider, and squirrel monkeys; seeing a mama sloth and her baby, a giant anteater--a really funny story about that one, crocodiles and hammerhead sharks in the Sirena River, tons of Great Curasou and Tinamou, a few more trogons, a wooly possum, tiger herons, a tapir, tons of black hawks, a collared falcon, another coati, a roseate spoonbill, tons of whiptail lizards and anoles, marguay cat tracks, mountain deer, and so many other birds, plants, trees oh my.



Unfortunately they don´t allow night hikes in Corcovado due to some folks getting lost for 3 days a while ago. So we hung out at the station and just watched as wildlife came to us. The tapir is one of the coveted sightings near Sirena. There aren´t many of them and they are quite shy. While we were sitting on the front porch of the station, one just came strolling out of the woods onto the airstrip --a large grassy spot adjacent to the station. People went crazy shouting tapir tapir tapir. It was quite hilarious. We had actually gotten to see one sleeping earlier in the day, so we weren´t as crazy. Sadly we didn´t have our camera ready for that one.


We spent a very--I mean very--hot night trying to get some sleep before our 4 am hike with Everest.

Due to the heat, 4 am actually couldn´t come soon enough for me. I was up and at em excited to get out of the tent. Our goal was to follow the same trail on which we had seen the puma tracks the day before. Everest was determined to find it for us. Unfortunately the moon was almost full that night, so there was still a lot of light in the morning--not so good for hunting if you are a puma--but it was still really dark under the canopy.



We weren´t lucky enough to see the puma, but as we circled back to the River Serena to see if our tapir friend would show her elongated face, another group that came after us --about 45 minutes after--said they saw fresh puma tracks on the same trail we were on. She was stalking us--or following us in any case. Too funny.

We went back to peak in at our tapir friend that we had seen the day before. She was in the same spot, but as we watched she got up. She was only about feet away from us in some really thick pineapple relative plants--and enormous. Even Everest was a little nervous and started to back away with an alarmed look on his face. Luckily she settled herself back down and we enjoyed watching her flicking her ears our way. We went back, had breakfast, and went for another walk. We didn´t see too many new species that day--maybe some birds whose names I can´t remember--but we did get to watch Everest dance around as he discoved his pants were full of those tiny little pepper ticks. Poor guy--but it made a funny sight--until we also discovered a few on ourselves a little later.



We met up with another day tour at around 10:30 and got back on the boat. The waves were crazy choppy and we were actually given life preservers for the first time. If not for the courage of the fearless crew.....la la la. We made it anyway. We stopped at another station, San Pedrillo, on the way back and hiked up to a waterfall. We all got in and enjoyed some pretty deep pools and Isaac managed to scramble up to and behind the waterfall itself. The rocks were quite slippery, but remarkably no blood was shed.

Whew what a day. I was exhausted--but it was the 31st and more excitement was yet to come. After dinner, Everest came to find us again to celebrate the New Year Tico style. I should really have Isaac write this part because I don´t exactly remember all of it. Let´s just say there were fireworks on the beach, lots of dancing, and, um, a little bit too much drinking.