Casa Orquidia & Esquinas River, Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica
Today we started our Costa Rica portion of the trip. Golfo Dulce or “sweet gulf,” is not really a sweet or freshwater gulf, but since it is a very deep gulf with many rivers discharging fresh water, and a really shallow exit, in the rainy season the water s of the gulf are less salty than the ones in the open ocean. Once we were officially in the country, we were clear to explore this Gulf for the day, and that was exactly what we did.
This morning we went over to what can best be described as an open botanical garden, which has been put together by the effort of a couple of US citizens over the last thirty or more years living in the place. This garden was like a little heaven, where you could walk through nice manicured trails looking at all kinds of tropical plants, both native and not native of the country.
We not only looked at the plants; we also looked at all the wildlife that comes to the garden to visit flowers and fruit, such as tanagers, scarlet macaws, toucans and even some tent-making bats sleeping under a big palm leaf that they had made into a tent for shelter.
The rest of our day we explored what is considered the third most diverse ecosystem on our planet: the mangrove estuaries of the Esquinas river. Here we learned about how rich and important these ecosystems are for our planet, and got to see some of the wildlife they protect like monkeys, ibises, kites, egrets and even some close looks at two tree boas that were spotted in some of the Zodiac cruises up the river.
