Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica - Part II

We spent a full day with our guide walking the trails around the Sirena ranger station looking for wildlife, learning about tropical plants and avoiding the many dangers of the tropical rainforest. One piece of advise, if you are ever on a trip where you hope to see animals, spend the money for a guide as they are invaluable. We were able to just relax and walk knowing that our guide would find and show us the interesting sights whether plant or animal. Some of the other travelers staying at the ranger station did not have a guide and spent a frustrating day trying to find much of anything in the thick jungle landscape.

A jungle stream...home of birds, crocodiles, monkeys and...

...tapirs! One of natures weirdest and ugliest creatures.

In Corcovado, even the trees can hurt you.

This little guy had a striking resemblance to a stuffed Woody the Woodpecker.

If you look hard you can see that this beautiful moth disguises itself as a snakes head.

 So, while I was out for a little hike by myself that day, I walked over to the edge of a clearing to "relieve myself" and looked down to discover this fellow looking right back up at me...I quickly decided I could probably just hold it until I made it back to the ranger station.

The Tree Frog...the cutest of the frogs.

As exciting as it was to wander around and discover the hidden creatures of the rainforest, it was not always the most pleasant hiking environment.

After tiring of the ankle deep mud trails and relentless rain, Tracy retired to this veranda and spent the rest of the day watching animals and talking to friends protected from the sloppy mess of the jungle.

If you are thinking about Costa Rica and are up for an adventure, consider Corcovado National Park instead of(or in addition to) the usual Costa Rica tourist spots. This last little corner of primeval rainforest is well worth the trip. With all the rain we had during our hike in Corcovado, the River(shown in Part I) had become impassible by the time we were scheduled to hike out of the park. Because of this, we were forced to find an emergency exit out of the rainforest. This little adventure I will describe in a future post titled: "Escape from Corcovado"