In the morning, we boarded a tourist bus. Zaida had given us the option of waking up at 5:30am and catching the public bus to Limon, or paying five dollars to hire a driver and leave at 7:30 directly from our hotel. We perhaps didn’t feel so adventurous as a group that early in the morning.
We loaded onto the bus, and immediately Anthony, Dave, Tracy, and Jimmy popped open beer cans. The most popular local beer is Imperial. The logo might as well be on the flag. You’ll see scores of large yellow backlit signs with the black Imperial bird with its wings outstretched marking the numerous tiny bars and licoreras that tightly hug the roadsides in the country.
We drove for about an hour to Limon, where we stopped for about an hour to visit the bank and grocery store. While I stood in a very slow-moving line in the Scotiabank, Mere visited the Mas Por Menos store, Walmart’s Latin American chain. She bought various chocolate things, more water, and a banana (or perhaps a plantain) the size of my forearm. I actually couldn’t finish it.
From Limon, we bussed to the port in Moin. We boarded a riverboat which had barely enough room for our group and our luggage. Our captain for our 80 km journey to Tortuguero (the place of the turtle) was Willis. He had the eyesight of a hawk. As we sped down the man-made waterway at 20 knots, he would spot some small bird, monkey, or sloth way up in the trees from half a mile away. Anthony became the official wildlife photographer. His camera was dubbed the sniper because of its powerful zoom lens.
We encountered many impressive birds like herons and ahningas, as well as some huge river crocodiles and howler monkeys, but perhaps the animal that left the biggest impression on us was the leaf-cutter ants we saw when we stopped for lunch. Leaf-cutter ants look no different than normal ants except for slightly larger heads. They harvest leaves from a tree, the pieces of which they carry to their colony that might be hundreds of meters away. A single file line of ants with little green sails on their back that stretches beyond your line of sight demands you to tread softly.
Our meal that day was also pretty memorable. For all we know, the open-air diner where we ate excellent fried chicken, fried plantains, and rice and beans was accessible only by boat. The blue plate special with a bottle of Coca Cola was a royal feast after three hours on a cramped boat.
After a couple more hours, we arrived in the village of Tortuguero and our hotel, Miss Junies (or Miss Junnies, depending on who painted the sign). We had plenty of daylight to walk around town. The town seemed to be a tight-knit, safe community more welcoming than Puerto Viejo, and somehow cleaner despite its all-sand streets. It’s notable that the village is only accessible by boat or plane. Mere and I saw children in their school uniforms playing soccer on the basketball court and played peek-a-boo with an adorable three-year-old local girl in one of the gift shops.
We ate a very good dinner of chicken with Caribbean spices (and rice and beans) at the hotel, and I ordered one of the local beers for a change of pace from my constant diet of Cokes. I actually ordered an Imperial, but they had run out so I was treated to a Bavaria Dark. The Boulder beer snob in me scoffed at its simplistic classification as a “dark” beer, and it lacked the strong, thick flavor and alcohol content I expected from a darker beer. However, the Mississippi country boy in me drank it with fervor.
After dinner, we signed up for the chance to watch sea turtles land on the beach and lay their eggs. The Caribbean Conservation Corporation organizes these tour groups so that there are never too many tourists on the beach that the turtles are disturbed from their routines. Despite that, we still were able to get very up close and personal with the huge green turtles. They undergo a process whereby they make their way a few meters away from the ocean onto the beach, dig a hole at least a couple of feet deep. Lay 100-200 eggs, and camouflage their nest to discourage predators. Although there may be no way to really know, the turtle conservationists estimate that only one of the turtles from a nest may eventually make it back to the beach to spawn.
Our guide was very enthusiastic about his job, and when he was radioed that there was another turtle landing further down the beach, he encouraged our group to book it the better part of a kilometer. Mere had worn her rubber boots to avoid the shock of hermit crabs crawling across her feet, but she hadn’t worn socks, so she ended up with blisters on her heels at the end of the night.
The guidebook said that the weather in Tortuguero was hot and humid at its very best. That night must have proved the rule. Additionally, the floors and sheets were irreversibly coated with fine black sand. These characteristics coupled together added up to less than comfortable sleeping conditions.
|
