Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica
Early risers this morning saw a mirror surface to the very end of the large southern bay of Golfo Dulce. As the tide flowed some of us opted to slip onto kayaks to paddle quietly along the stands of mangroves lining the shore. The air and sea was so calm that the cloud covered sky blended into the mirror reflection of the sea making it difficult to determine up from down. Kayakers discovered a variety of birds perched in the mangroves, such as snowy egrets, tri-colored herons, great egrets, and many others. Serenity engulfed those quietly paddling in the channels of the mangroves. Another option for the morning was a walk along the remote road paralleling the shoreline but in the forest. The walk was not at all disrupted by the occasional vehicle passing going some where on this road to essentially no where. The walkers were rewarded with a long list of birds and with a brief rest stop at a small local cantina before being picked up by Zodiac and returned to the Sea Voyager. For those not walking or paddling quietly over the water, there was a Zodiac cruise along the mangrove stands to learn about these very interesting and unusual kinds of plants. During the slow cruise there were many different species of birds spotted. One of the more obvious was the Whimbrel spending its winter in the tropics before returning to the arctic where it spends the summer breeding and feeding season.
In the middle and hottest part of the day we traveled a few miles out of Golfo Dulce to a small isolated paradise along the shoreline. A few people decided the water looked inviting and spent some time after lunch swimming in the tepid waters behind the ship. Late in the afternoon we visited the well-kept botanical gardens at Casa Orquedea. To our delight this oasis of flora and fauna in a surrounding forest provided an opportunity to see close up many of the native plants and some of the birds that live in the area. One of the highlights was a white-necked puffbird perched on a branch for all to see and a soaring ghostly White Hawk. In the evening as we cruised slowly out of the gulf, rain drenched the areas we had just left and we indulged in a fine Costa Rican buffet dinner.
