Osa Peninsula, Day 5

Yesterday was a water day. We rose early to go on a dolphin watching expedition in the Golfo Dulce, which sits between the Osa Peninsula and the Costa Rican mainland lying just above Panama. Our first trip across the gulf brought us close to a humpback whale and her baby. Very shy creatures, they would emerge for a few seconds and then quickly plunge back down into the waters only to resurface some distance away. Our boat driver went back and forth in pursuit, and we got several good looks at the pair. We then continued on to visit a shoreline refuge for animals maimed by poachers or the pet trade, or protected for other reasons. The American woman running this refuge was a bit of a tyrant, however, and we were put off by her attitude, particularly the way she spoke to one of her assistants who was probably an unpaid intern working there for the summer (at least that’s Marc’s guess). That said, we do recognize that she is doing important work and enjoyed learning a bit more about the animals in her keeping, particularly those we had not seen: the more elusive two-toed sloth, the nocturnal kinkajou, and for Shuwen, the tayra (Marc saw one while running here the first day). They also had a really adorable but demanding monkey who requested scratching from everyone, sometimes in rather inappropriate places (her backside, for instance)!
On our trip back across the bay, we stopped for a short snorkeling session to look at corals and clams, as well as bright fishes near the water surface, and then managed to spend a good 45 minutes watching bottlenose dolphins jumping around our boat. They are amazingly friendly and trusting creatures; unlike the whales from the early morning, these dolphins did not seem bothered by the various boats of people who were watching them, and instead almost seemed eager to put on a jumping show. Indeed, the boats communicate by radio to each other the locations of dolphin sightings and cooperate to bring eager voyeurs such as us to prime sites on any given day.
Once back on land, we had a 45 minute break (during which we gladly went to a local crafts shop near our resting location) before going on an afternoon trip to kayak in a mangrove forest. This too was a rather fun experience with a friendly “Indian” or person with indigenous roots, who told us all manner of stories about the wildlife, his way of life on the Osa Peninsula, as well as truly interesting mangrove facts, such as the number of species of crabs in these swamp ecosystems (56 in the Osa mangrove). Since we had gotten an early start, we managed to go in as far as our boats would take us, deep into primary mangrove forest thick with roots, brown-black mud, and not much else except calm and a different sort of silence and peacefulness. We were stopped by a downed log which our guide told us he had applied for a permit to cut, permit which had not been granted because it would be disturbing the natural state of the forest. On our way back out, we stopped on a narrow strip of beach separating the mangrove swamp from the Pacific, Shuwen learned how to open a coconut with just a stick, and we drank fresh coconut water, ate coconut meat, and enjoyed local pineapple, all the while watching the sky darken and storm clouds roll in. We returned dirty and a bit wet but really really satisfied with our day. The tico who drove us back to Lapa Rios then warmed out hearts by blaring “YMCA” and other classic tunes on his radio.
Our last full day in Osa today was then spent doing a few things we had not managed to do during the previous days, such as swimming in the Pacific, going on the early morning bird tour with our bird-loving guide Fernando, learning about the eco-resort’s efforts to be sustainable (the highlights are feeding kitchen waste to pigs to produce biogas for the employee kitchen and a sophisticated wastewater treatment process for all wastewater produced, as well as serious energy conservation efforts), and doing the night walk into the jungle. It has been a wonderful week here; we will miss having monkeys jumping outside our window and interesting bird calls all around, as well as all the other magical aspects of being immersed in a rainforest environment, disconnected from everything we know.