Jungle Jumble

Oct 27 2019

By Haakon

This week was really fun, wet and tiring. It started with us leaving Samara on Monday, driving 6 hours to a small palm oil growing town of Sierpe. In Sierpe there is a “ferry port” it’s a small café with boats that take you to a couple points along to Osa Peninsula, our stop was the Jungla del Jaguar. The mangrove river portion was calm but then it got exciting as the captain maneuvered the way through the crashing waves on our way to the ocean. When we got to our lodge’s beach, we had to jump out of the boat into the water with all our bags and run to the beach where we were greeted by James, a biologist who introduced us to the place before we took our bags to our cabin.

The next day we went for a morning nature hike with James in the pouring rain. We were able to see a troop of Spider Monkeys, a Toucan, and a couple orange and black lizards. I didn’t really realize how humid the jungle is.  Apparently here humidity is between 80-100%; it feels like it and everything smells damp. On the second day we went to the Corcovado National Park holding 2.5% of the world’s plant and wildlife and being the most biodiverse place in the world! The guide we had was great. He showed us multiple cool animals and reptiles on our walk. We saw a Sloth, an Anteater, birds, Lizards, Geckos, White-nosed coati, Scarlet macaw, an American Crocodile, Squirrel Monkeys, Spider Monkeys, White-faced Capuchin monkeys and a Spectacled caiman. I just want to say the Sloth is not only the smelliest thing ever they are also soooooo slow its insane it took her 30ish seconds to turn her head. The sloth has the second slowest metabolism of any animal on earth. On the way back the captain stopped to let everyone see a pod of whales, the whales were 35 feet long and got 50 feet from our boat.

Finally, we had had to go home so I woke up at 5:45 to go back to Sierpe where we would get a car to drive to San Jose. The “ferry showed up at 7, it was a 25-30-foot-long fiberglass boat with open air seating and twin 250HP engines, the captain was wearing board shorts and a trash bag since it was raining. First I had to walk up to my waist to get in the boat before sitting down in my shorts and t-shirt, the boat was going really fast so all the rain felt like mini bullets on my face, then as we picked up more people the boat filled with water. During the last 30 minutes of the 2-hour ride I started to feel really sleepy and my muscles weren’t able to move well. By the time we got to Sierpe and I couldn’t move my legs out of a crouching position, I was having trouble talking, my hands were white, and trembling uncontrollably for a bit. My mom said I was mildly hypothermic, so my dad got me hot tea, I was okay within 20 minutes.

 Now I am sitting in my hotel room in San Jose writing this, with the sound of traffic not waves outside the window.  Tomorrow we are flying to Florida for a connection flight to Ecuador for two nights and that’s the general plan for the next couple days.