Another early start, under a bright sunny morning sky. We awoke today at the other extreme of the country, in the Guanacaste province on the northern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, in front of the popular surfer’s town of Tamarindo Beach.
Guanacaste is home to our “sabaneros”, which is how we call our cowboys in Costa Rica and is a region where cattle has traditionally been raised in the open savannas. This is the part of the country that has the biggest climate contrast throughout the year. During the rainy season, from May through November, rains are abundant and regular; but during the other half of the year, the dry season, it doesn’t rain at all and most trees lose their leaves and forest fires are common.
Well, it’s now the rainy season and so far so good: during the morning, before breakfast, we had a Zodiac cruise through the mangrove forest, in the estuary of the Tamarindo River. A black mangrove hawk, mangrove warblers, black bellied whistling ducks, plumbeous kites, yellow-crowned night herons, willets, neotropical cormorants, and a green heron sitting on a nest with two chicks were some of the birds that were spotted. Later this morning we offered a walk through the town, where we had the opportunity to buy local crafts and ice cream.
During lunch we watched big black rain clouds move in over the nearby hills. We asked our Captain (who is from this area) to try and make a prediction of the weather and he said “about half an hour before it rains” but he was wrong, it was just fifteen minutes! This however did not perturb some of us, as after a talk by one of our naturalists, we went out to the bay and did some kayaking.
