Costa Rica April 2007 - Day 6
On Sunday we ate breakfast and then hopped in the car to go to Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge. Caño Negro is in northern Costa Rica, almost to the Nicaraguan border. It is a refuge of forests and marshlands along the Rio Frio. The plan was to travel north to Los Chiles and catch a boat tour down the river to view the wildlife. We had originally intended to visit Monteverde Cloud Forest (which is southwest of Arenal), but Felix, our tour guide for the bike trip said that Caño Negro was better in terms of wildlife. Caño Negro is also closer at about an hour and a half drive as opposed to three to four for Monteverde.
The drive seemed to take longer and when we hit one of the towns where we were supposed to turn, we seemed to have come at it from the wrong direction. We clearly didn't make a turn we were supposed to, but we ended up in the right place. It just took us longer. A couple of hours later, we arrived at a dirt road turn off with signs indicating Caño Negro, however, I thought the tours left from the town of Los Chiles 10 km up the road. We went down the dirt road a little ways, changed our minds and headed back to Los Chiles.
I think we were expecting something like La Fortuna with tour services and souvenir shops. It was a tiny little run-down town with not much going on. We couldn't find any tours so we headed back south and took the very bumpy road that made us really glad we got the mini-SUV for our rental car.
Finally, we found some signs advertising tours. The first one we stopped at however, they had no guides available to take us. At the second place we stopped we were able to get a tour. It was at a hotel and there was also a restaurant there. We had a couple of hours before the tour so we ate and hung out on the grounds of the hotel (which seemed eerily empty).
Our tour was at 2:00, but at around 1:30, the guide showed up and asked if we wanted to go. We were tired of hanging around so we eagerly agreed. We were the only people there for the tour so we had our own personal tour guide!
For the next few hours, we chugged up the river and then back down and past the dock were we got on, then back up. It was like the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland except that it was real (and the guide wasn't insanely enthusiastic and didn't speak English very well). The guide was really nice and knowledgeable, but his English wasn't as good as some of the other guides so I spoke with him in Spanish a few times or a Spanish/English mix.
We saw a lot of wildlife on our tour including tons of water birds (two kinds of kingfishers, cormorants, anhingas, great egrets, snowy egrets, a couple kinds of herons, and more). We also saw a ton of caimans (kind of like a small crocodiles), a few iguanas, a couple of basilisk lizards (also called "Jesus Christ lizard" because they run on water, but we didn't see that part), a three-toed sloth (way way up in a tree), and some howler monkeys.
We drove back to La Fortuna after our tour (taking the correct route this time and shaving some time off our drive). We stopped in La Fortuna for dinner at a "Mexican" restaurant. I use the term Mexican lightly because we really have no idea what it was, but it wasn't any Mexican we were used to. Our chips and queso dip was a bowl of melted tico cheese (aka flavorless) and a couple of small corn tortillas. Roger's "taco" was several of the same small tortillas with a big pile of meat on top and then slices of the same cheese melted on top. The whole thing was strange but it wouldn't have been a problem if it tasted good, which, unfortunately, it didn't. So we went back to our room and ate pastries from the yummy bakery while we packed all of our stuff up for an early departure to San José the following morning.
Click here for Day 7.
The drive seemed to take longer and when we hit one of the towns where we were supposed to turn, we seemed to have come at it from the wrong direction. We clearly didn't make a turn we were supposed to, but we ended up in the right place. It just took us longer. A couple of hours later, we arrived at a dirt road turn off with signs indicating Caño Negro, however, I thought the tours left from the town of Los Chiles 10 km up the road. We went down the dirt road a little ways, changed our minds and headed back to Los Chiles.
I think we were expecting something like La Fortuna with tour services and souvenir shops. It was a tiny little run-down town with not much going on. We couldn't find any tours so we headed back south and took the very bumpy road that made us really glad we got the mini-SUV for our rental car.
Finally, we found some signs advertising tours. The first one we stopped at however, they had no guides available to take us. At the second place we stopped we were able to get a tour. It was at a hotel and there was also a restaurant there. We had a couple of hours before the tour so we ate and hung out on the grounds of the hotel (which seemed eerily empty).
Our tour was at 2:00, but at around 1:30, the guide showed up and asked if we wanted to go. We were tired of hanging around so we eagerly agreed. We were the only people there for the tour so we had our own personal tour guide!
For the next few hours, we chugged up the river and then back down and past the dock were we got on, then back up. It was like the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland except that it was real (and the guide wasn't insanely enthusiastic and didn't speak English very well). The guide was really nice and knowledgeable, but his English wasn't as good as some of the other guides so I spoke with him in Spanish a few times or a Spanish/English mix.
We saw a lot of wildlife on our tour including tons of water birds (two kinds of kingfishers, cormorants, anhingas, great egrets, snowy egrets, a couple kinds of herons, and more). We also saw a ton of caimans (kind of like a small crocodiles), a few iguanas, a couple of basilisk lizards (also called "Jesus Christ lizard" because they run on water, but we didn't see that part), a three-toed sloth (way way up in a tree), and some howler monkeys.
We drove back to La Fortuna after our tour (taking the correct route this time and shaving some time off our drive). We stopped in La Fortuna for dinner at a "Mexican" restaurant. I use the term Mexican lightly because we really have no idea what it was, but it wasn't any Mexican we were used to. Our chips and queso dip was a bowl of melted tico cheese (aka flavorless) and a couple of small corn tortillas. Roger's "taco" was several of the same small tortillas with a big pile of meat on top and then slices of the same cheese melted on top. The whole thing was strange but it wouldn't have been a problem if it tasted good, which, unfortunately, it didn't. So we went back to our room and ate pastries from the yummy bakery while we packed all of our stuff up for an early departure to San José the following morning.
Click here for Day 7.
Comments
Post a Comment