Rob and Anna's travel adventure

Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica

Anna's entry -

Before heading out to Corcovado National Park, we made a stop in Golfito, and hiked a rarely visited Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Golfito - a home to abundant species of plants and animals. We did our hike early in a.m., it was all up the hill, but it definitely was worth it. We saw LOTS of white-faced capuchin monkeys - at one time we probably saw about 20 of them climbing the tress, as well as a family of beautiful toucans. Unfortunately, even in this protected park, we observed some housing development - which means the nature here in next 10-20 years most likely will be gone.... Really glad we were able to experience it while it exists, but really sad to see what we are, humans, doing to the environment around us...

After Golfito we took a ferry to Puerto Jimenez - not a very friendly town to outsiders, but it is a gateway to the Parque Nacional Corcovado - a highlight of out trip. This unspoilt national park is the last original great react of moist tropical forest of the Pacific Central America. Covering the southwestern corner of the Peninsula de Osa, it is home to Costa Rica's largest population of scarlet macaws as well as great animal and plant species, including jaguars, pumas, coatis, toucans, and snakes. We were able to rent a tent, and spent two days and one night in the Corcovado National Park. It was a great experience! We spent two days hiking, saw a great variety of animals, and set up our tent right on the ocean shore at the park entrance, so we could hear the waves and palm tress at night. During our two days of hiking we saw numerous scarlet macaws - gorgeous huge parrot birds, which were lucky enough to survive all that craziness of being pouched, and are currently protected in the park. We also saw lots of monkeys - white-faced capuchins, and spider monkeys, as well as two large families of raccoon-like animals *I am going to look up the official name of it soon* - they were not afraid of us at all, and were digging big holes in the ground, and pulling out big land crabs right in front if us. The highlight of our hike was bumping into a puma, who after a hunt was carrying a captured animal victim in her mouth. Besides mammals, we saw lots of goat spiders - they make very strong web threads, used for bullet proof materials. We also left with a little present from the park - apparently there are tons of small tics living there, and about 10 of them attached themselves to me, with other 7 of them to Rob. It wasn't very pleasant to pull them out, but luckily they do not carry any disease. Not a big price to pay after all that great hiking experience!

posted by Rob and Anna @ 5:20 PM