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Corcovado National Park |
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this is the owl - cool huh?
squirell monkeys - they are the cutest!
this is a tapier eating - check out the nose
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it was a long hike. maybe 21 km? someone from the course will correct me if i've underestimated... before the hike there was a long ride in the back of a truck (pictured above). we forded rivers, avoided crashes with motorcyclers, and inhaled exhaust... but the most exciting part was the make shift seat breaking - every one tumbling forward, and watching diego aka macguyver fixing the broken seat with telephone wire and a jack knife! when we got there we hiked about 3 km to the station los patos. at los patos we re-filled our water bottles and really began to hike...it was the best. we hiked and identified plants and looked at birds and tromped in streams. it took us most of the day. i felt like i was absorbing corcovado, but i couldn't get enough. we saw our fist squirell monkeys - they are the cutest - holy geeze. and lots of new plants and some plants that we already knew and that was so cool - already knowing the plants in a place. wow! there were caimens in the streams and shrimp too! i knew that i would like corcovado. corcovado is a really neat park because it is the only park in costa rica that was created to preserve an entire ecosystem. the whole watershed is part of the park...that makes a big difference - conserving the whole thing and not just a part. there were so many large mammals - amazing. but i never saw a puma. it is hot in corcovado. erika said that i should just relax and realize that i'm doing my kidneys a favor becasue they have to work less when i just sweat out all of my toxins...i don't know about it, but we definately drank lots of water. when we got to corcovado we were tired and we rested. we all wanted to sleep in the tents but there weren't enough so haldre, katie, julia and I were in a room together our other usual roommate - jen got to be in a tent! having learned my lesson from palo verde, at night i slept with the misquito net. the first day we met our resource people for real during orientation walks. we were joined by larry, jen, and charlie. Erika and Diego led our fist walk - it was nice and slow and we kept asking what familiar plants were. It was great. Then we had Charlie and Jen - and right at the beginning we saw a pair of crested owls - they were - que tuanis mae. after lunch larry took us to the river - that was the best. we saw so many juvenile shrimps i could hardly breath - it was so cool. larry has pictures, which when i get them i will post - you might not be able to believe it there were easily 100 or more juvenile shrimp clinging to a rock the size of a fist - all up and down the bank of the river! after the river we hiked quickly back to play ultimate frisbee. for pretty much every day we were at corcovado there was a frisbee game - this is another reason it is my favorite site. that and the miles and miles of untouched coast line! did i mention the sunsets?
this is the serina station where we stayed.
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