Welcome to the Jungle!

With La Fortuna disappearing into the distance, accessed by the famous jeep-boat-jeep with no jeeps in sight, we were heading even further in to the middle of nowhere, the Caribbean Coast. Good things come to those who wait, and after a taxi, bus, walk, bus, boat, boat, walk - we were finally at our destination. Slowed down by dried out rivers, broken down boats and terrible roads we were hoping it would be worth it! 

Billed as a "Little Amazon", Tortuguero is an isolated village sitting on a narrow strip of land between the wetlands and the sea, surrounded by national park and no roads.

The first boat of the day

Within minutes of getting off the boat, we could see the area was teeming with wildlife. Here's a scary amount of eagles soaring overhead, ominously following us.

The birds!

 It was good to be back on the Caribbean, but no swimming this time due to bull sharks and rips!

All to ourselves

As the island is only reachable by boat, there's no motorised transport at all. Everyone is going slow on foot, or wobbling around on modified kid's bikes.

Rush hour traffic

With three nights in Tortuguero, we were always keeping our eyes peeled for the big ticket animals that we wanted to spot:

What's that?!

Sometimes you could look hard and see nothing. Sometimes, you'd be laid in a hammock relaxing and the wildlife would come to you. This cute little couple slowly (and we mean slowly!) lumbered above our heads into our garden:

A rare moment of being awake

Hugs

It's a hard life being a baby sloth

With the wetland national park on our doorsteps, we thought best to hire a professional's eyes so that we didn't miss too much. Looking around town, we thought we'd go for the most legitimate looking establishment we could find. This one looked promising:

Supporting local business!

Up before the sparrows could fart at 5am, we wandered down to meet Castor and his boat for a morning tour of the natural canals by canoe. He had an amazing talent for spotting and hearing things a long way off, however camouflaged. But our first spot of the day were these parrots, sounding like an old married couple arguing.

I told you it was a left turn...

Things got harder to find though, Castor had to park us right in front of this iguana so we could see it. Shortly after the Iguana spotted us and fell into the water, apparently they can swim!

Chillin out, relaxin, maxin all cool...

Looking for breakfast

Another hard spot!

It was great touring the waterways, just us and another bigger boat - well away from the big motorised tour boats.

A lesser spotted boat of Germans

But sometimes we were the ones being watched and followed...

A spider monkey!

Me? Posing? No... but do take a photo

Some of the lizards got a bit too big for our liking. These cayman crocodiles can leap 2m out the water!

Creepy

Hide and seek

A big hope for us was to see some toucans, just before turning round we got the spot!

You reckon I've got a big beak? Have you seen yours?

Whilst other birds were a bit happier to be seen...

Flapper

A tiger heron searching for brekkie

And the monkeys reappeared again, to wave us goodbye.

King of the swingers, the jungle VIP

With a day pass for the national park that was good for the whole day, we ventured back in by foot in the late afternoon on the trails. Sadly all we saw without an eagle eyed guide was some lizards. Doing, the, erm, natural thing that lizards do.

Lizzy style

On that perfect, romantic segue... that pretty much ends our time in Costa Rica and Central America, with only one night in the capital San Jose before we fly out to Los Angeles for two nights and then home. It's been a great two months exploring this little corner of the world. Feeling brave, we ventured out to the town's one and only nightclub - definitely a place that's just for the locals. But wow, do the locals have a good spot for a beer and a sunset view. Three years of honeymooning, and we're still having a blast.

Cheers!