From the National Geographic Sea Lion in Costa Rica and Panama

Caletas & Corcovado

This morning, we arrived to the magnificent Corcovado National Park in the Peninsula of Osa, on the outer side of the peninsula.

Our early morning visit today was at Caletas on the buffer zone of Corcovado National Park. We disembarked at the rocky cove of Caletas (this is what Caletas actually means in Spanish) and proceeded to walk on the trail that leads into the rainforest. This diverse rainforest is always quite interesting to observe, with its buttressed tall trees, riddled with epiphytes and woody lianas.

The trails were still wet with the heavy rains that had fallen previous to our arrival this morning. This morning, aside from the lush vegetation, we observed the always spectacularly colorful scarlet macaws, loud troops of howler monkeys, organized formations of brown pelican in the sky and leafcutter ants on the forest floor.

For our activities this afternoon, the National Geographic Sea Lion was repositioned to the nearby National Park of Corcovado at the San Pedrillo sector. In the afternoon some guests took a walk to the waterfall of the San Pedrillo River that gives its name to this area of the park. Our guests had the opportunity to observe the magnificent trees by the river’s edge, visit the waterfall and enjoy a refreshing downstream swim on a nice pond by a smaller cascade, all of this under the scrutiny of a small taciturn crocodile that observed all of our activity at a respectful distance.

Another group went on a “flatter” walk on the trail to the Pargo (Snapper) River and back. The Pargo trail offered us great sightings of the always so active spider monkeys. Usually spider monkeys are high in the treetops, but today they were low, and this permitted us to observe them really well. We even experienced some kind of confrontation with a nearby troop of mantled howler monkeys, but because of the height of the trees we couldn’t clearly determine its cause. As we walked out of the park we were pleasantly surprised by three of the elusive large great Curassows (large turkey like tropical understory birds) quietly and carefully walking at a distance across the trail ahead of us. So the Curassows provided us with a nice ending to Corcovado in preparation of our last day tomorrow at Manuel Antonio National Park.