Manuel Antonio National Park & Curu Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica
When we think about the tropical rain forest, the first picture that comes to our mind is a lush thick jungle, the loud bird calls and the monkeys swinging from branch to branch… well the truth is that it is not quite that way. The tropical rain forest is surely the habitat for a wide variety of animals… but what the animals will be in each area depends on many conditions.
The first day of our journey brought us to one of the Costa Rica’s smallest national parks, located on the central pacific coastline, a strategic location. The park is a meeting point for the tropical rainforest of southern Costa Rica and the tropical dry forest of northern Costa Rica. As an example, the tree trunks from a dry forest are more twisted, with rough bark and rounder leaves, while rainforest ones are tall and fairly straight, with smooth bark and elongated, pointy leaves. This allows them to drain all the rainwater away; and so it goes for many other plant characteristics.
Today we had a couple hiking options to choose from. The first adventurous guests decided on the well-named tropical stair master, a loop trail that brought us to the hill top of this park. As we were making our way through, a gorilla-sized howl gave us the goose bumps. A male howler monkey was doing his wake-up call to his troop. These monkeys live in troops of around 15 individuals, and they are mainly leaf-eaters, and diurnal.
The next mammal to come to the show was the agoutis, a rainforest rodent whose job in the wild is to destroy seeds as it munches on them and to plant the others it cannot eat right away. The stair master hikers hit the other trail option. The name says everything… sloth valley trail. On this one, we got to spot a two-toed sloth hanging upside down from a beach almond tree and, later on, a three-toed sloth taking a long nap on bamboo forest.
Sloths are spoiled creations of Mother Nature. They are tree dwellers, leaf-eaters, and mammals that don’t control their body temperature very well. They also have a very slow digestive system; they go to the bathroom just once a week. And, as if all these great sightings were not enough, as we were making our way north to our afternoon destination several pods of pantropical spotted dolphins came to bow ride on the National Geographic Sea Lion for awhile. From the air, dozens of brown boobies flew so close to the ship you could almost touch them.
The second outing of the day was spent in a private refuge, located in the tropical dry forest of northern Costa Rica. It was truly a treat to our guests, because we won’t see this type of forest again on the rest of our trip, and because is a highly threatened forest.
As a great closure to a great day, a troop of white-faced capuchin monkeys displayed for us all their acrobatic tricks and behavior. Life is good in the tropics.
