Golfo Dulce & Casa Orquideas
First day in Costa Rica!
Today we woke up docked at the port of Golfito in the tranquil waters of Golfo Dulce on the Southern Pacific most tip of Costa Rica. The perfect harbor! A little gulf within a gulf! That actually is what the name of this port stands for, “Golfito” (little gulf).
This is indeed an oasis of peace! Very deep calm waters, a pristine tropical rain forest surrounding its edges… all this summed up to isolation due to the distance and poor accessibility from major populated areas, making this area a natural pristine oasis of peace.
After doing immigration papers we readily left port to continue our adventures.
New country, new adventures! We arrived quickly at the beautiful Casa Orquideas botanical garden, home of Trudy and Ron MacAllister, who have tenderly looked after their garden in this remote part of the world for the last 30 years. What started for them as a hobby in their backyard garden, slowly but surely became a full-scale showcase of tropical plants, with great displays of several different tropical families of plants, like orchids, bromeliads, palms, heliconias, gingers and others, besides many tropical fruiting trees, some familiar to us and others new, some of which were bearing fruit that attracted a large number of equally interesting tropical birds like tanagers and toucans.
We were pleasantly surprised by the large congregation of chestnut-mandibled toucans (the largest of the six species of toucans in Costa Rica) that flew from tree to tree in the gardens, giving an opportunity for most of us to observe these large, large-billed birds, really a very representative and must-see bird when visiting the New World tropics.
The day ended with a costal tour by zodiac and kayak deep into the Golfo Dulce area and a gorgeous sunset on the sundeck.
