Stage Two: La Leona Lodge (Oct 13th until Oct 17th)

And what a ride it was! The collectivo is no bus or anything. It's a truck and you feel like you're in a cattle transport. It takes off at 6am and 1:30pm going all the way to Carate. I have already written that the road is in a bad condition. But taking it on the back of a truck is far worse than in a rather comfortable 4x4. Anyway...we stopped at a soda where I made friends with a really cute little dog (aka the flea mothership) and then continued to Carate.

Shortly before we arrived and while passing the air field the driver stopped and showed us an ant eater approaching the vehicle. Ant eaters are really cool animals climbing trees to find -guess what- ants and termites which are their main diet. I took a short video which I can hopefully post soon. So we dropped our bags off and took the collectivo back for a couple of kilometers until we reached a farm where people had spotted an ocelot with cubs several times over the last few weeks. With all my camera gear, the humidity and the high temperatures it became a very intense hike. We went upriver where my rather low hiking boots proved to be the wrong shoes as I should have bought rubber boots instead. Next time I'll know better. :)

So we spotted lots of beautiful birds like several types of colibris, hawks and herons and, of course, a plethora of insects. No cats though which was a little sad but this is nature and it's good that way because you gotta be lucky. We spent the whole afternoon searching for traces of the ocelots and we found tracks but that was it. I guess the most exciting thing was that we (well, Roger) spotted a tapir which panicked and fled into the mangroves close to a very scenic laguna by the sea. These guys can dive and especially because of their impressive size they don't really fit into the rainforest setting where the major part of the fauna is rather small. Like ants which I seem to have a very special relationship with. I don't particularly like them but they on the other hand LOVE me. Every bit of me. Literally. I haven't ever been bitten by so many ants anywhere else. I must be an ant magnet if such a thing exists. Anyway...where were we? Yeah, on our way back to Carate. Thirsty as hell. And whats better to quench thirst than the liquid inside of a coconut. Or two of them. Or three.Well, we were happy to get a lift by the "afternoon collectivo" which took us the last couple of kilometres to Carate. We then had to walk along the beach for three kilometres to get to the La Leona Eco-Lodge which is a really nice thing if you aren't tired like we were. Well, at least our luggage was brought there via "horse car", a small trailer which gets pulled over the sand by a horse belonging to the lodge.

So shortly before we arrived at the lodge we found a few turtles which must have hatched just a couple of minutes ago and we tried to save them from the crabs waiting for a nice dinner along the beach. Kind of cruel but what can you do? We backtracked their traces in the sand and found the nest where lots of them had already died or been eaten by all kinds of scavengers. I guess the total number we were able to save and accompany to the sea must have been around 14 to 18. An exciting situation as I had never seen turtles hatching before. Last year I was a witness of a huge turtle laying hundreds of eggs in Tortuguero National Park but that was it so far. Anyway. We had a traditional rice&beans dinner, went for another short walk upriver to find glass frogs, lots of spiders and sweet water shrimps and then concluded the day since we were supposed to wake up at 3am to start our hike through the park. But sleeping in a tent, especially when it rains hard outside can make you quite an insomniac. I had hardly slept when Roger woke me up. And what can I say...it was still raining. So we postponed the start until after breakfast which we had at 6:30. Well, my 3 hours of sleep until then didn't really make anything better. The 8 hour hike which followed was really, really exhausting. And the humidity makes things even worse. But the cool things we saw really made up for the effort we took. Tiger herons, hawks, bats, ground anoles, dragonflies, toucans, pelicans, all three types of monkeys, a deer, another anteater, squirrels, a yellow-striped dart frog, golden orb spiders, yellow headed caracaras...you name it. Another Wow-day in Corcovado!

On my second day at La Leona Roger left and besides a 2 hours night walk which was a little creepy all I did was relax. Very nice for a change. Even today I only went swimming and hiked for two hours until the heavy rain and the darkness chased me back to the lodge. Hey, I'm on holiday. :)

I have updated the pictures again, please find them here.

Thanks for reading my little travel blog, cheers to you where ever you are...!

Stefan