Family Day

 (January 28)

Today’s itinerary was to ride by skiff for 45 minutes south to La Sirena ranger station in Corcovado National Park. The boat trip actually required two boats with a transfer in the ocean ( the reason for the transfer was that the second boat, not owned by the lodge, could go faster). Little did we know that our adventure would begin on that boat ride!  Did you ever wonder how sea turtles mate? We discovered the answer today, at least for the ones we saw.  We watched a pair of Pacific (Black) Sea Turtles floating near the surface of the ocean mating  with a second male trying to “cut in on the dance”.  About 10 minutes later, we had a school of Pantropic Spotted Dolphins play around our boat, which gave us time to hear on the radio about a Humpback Whale cow and calf nearby.  We abandoned the dolphins to head to the whales.  The dolphins, not happy with this loss of attention, followed us for a bit.  Viewing the whales from water level was just amazing.  We got to see three or four full breaches between them!  

At Corcovado we walked about 5 miles on trails through the forest. While we saw many wonderful birds, the mammals dominated the day.  We encountered three troops of spider monkeys (the last one with some very young members) and two troops of howlers (the second troop with two females carrying very small ones on their backs).  We also saw a large group of coati, about 14 of them, foraging all around us and later sleeping in trees.  After our trek, we boarded our boat (it’s a wet landing) and had a picnic lunch floating on the Pacific.  We did not see any dolphins or whale on our return trip, but we did see a flying fish.  We learned that this fish leaps out of the water and glides above the surface in order to avoid be eaten by Dorado (Mahi mahi).  It looked like a flying sausage, and glided for much further ( at least 100 yards) than we had imagined.  As we neared the lodge beach, we watched in awe as the boat pilot ran the rocky gauntlet to the lodge landing as the tide was coming in.  

Back at the lodge, we went to an overlook to watch for a pair of scarlet macaws. While we waited, we were entertained by a pod of false killer whales leaping out of the water one after another.  They were in the distance, but we still had a good view aided by our binoculars.  We also saw some blows from the female and calf Humpback Whales.  Just a little later the male scarlet macaw arrived, then within a few minutes, the female arrived.  The pair started to preen each other then flew in tandem and finally snuggled into the hollow palm that is their nest as the sun was beginning to set behind them. We stayed to watch the sun set then headed for a glass of wine after a long, but very satisfying day. 

Pictured:  Pacific Sea Turtle, baby Central American Spider Monkey, baby Mantled Howler Monkey, Scarlet Macaws