There isn't a feeling like the one I experienced when I realized I got lost in the rain forest. I was probably late to lunch, we were supposed to come back by 12. I wanted to pack light, so I stuffed my notebook into the camera bag (did not fit into my pocket), leaving the camera bag slightly open. It dangled on my back as I tried climbing the rock among the rushing waters of the river but every time I would slide back down, dipping the camera into the river. At one point, I really thought I was going to be carried away by the river and...But the gigantic slimy rock turned me back and I followed the path I took backwards. I was happy I was on steady ground. My sense of direction is awful and when I got to the fork I was about to take the wrong turn again when one of our teacher assistants found me. This is the last picture that I took with my R.I.P. semi professional cannon camera, luckily the picture card survived.
In zoo-like La Selva with concrete paths, we saw the great green macaw, poison dart frog (very common), about 20 peccaries wondering around as if they were at home, currosaws, guans, mama sloth with her baby really up close, hog nosed pit viper, and I am sure I missed an animal. After a day and a half we rode to Tirumbina, which is in Sarapiqui and more isolated. There, we studied forest logging practices and painfully slowly rode in vans among cow pastures. On one of those pastures, the cows almost ran over a couple people, I was really close. That was the funniest life threatening situation that has happened to us so far. We hiked to a tourist center at Tirumbina through a comfortably paved trail. The highlight of that was the hanging bridge over the river, which swung back and forth.
In Parasmina we got the taste of the Caribbean in our first dish of bony fish. It was a frustrating yet awarding meal. Next day we were served a typically seasoned Caribbean rice. There couldn't be a place with more mosquitoes than here. The ate us all day long.
Still at Parasmina, we spent a night walking along the beach in the darkness looking for nesting turtles. I remember the moon hanged in the sickle shape, like the horns of a cow and stars were very clear. I saw the Orion's belt, little dipper, mars, and constellations I did not know about. Excitement rose and fell as we ran and laid in the sand until our feet felt numb, awaiting a signal from other guides about a turtle sighting. In the dark it looked like a mountain rising above the outline of sand. People crouched around it. Light and blocking the way could both scare the sensitive leather-back turtle back into the ocean. Once in the egg-laying trance, we could observe her, for nothing can bother the turtle during this moment. The turtle conservation team measured the dimensions of the turtle, tagged it and collected all the eggs in order to hide them away from poachers in another part of the beach. The sea turtle's head moved up and down, and the salt water excreted from her eyes looked like tears. We were allowed to touch her hard outer covering (leather back turtles do not have a shell). We had to back away far because when she finished laying eggs, the leather-back sea turtle swept the sand with her large fins to cover the nest (even though it is missing eggs now). Later we saw another turtle. She was 1.6 meters long. MAJESTIC.
On the way to Panama, we randomly stopped by a boy's house. Elephant beetles swarmed the trees. It was hard to believe that this gigantic beetle was not so common anymore due to deforestation.
For the sake of shortness, I will post about Panama tomorrow.
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