Costa Rican Rainforest

Stop number 3 on the Grand Panama Adventure of the Gibson Family was a major bucket list for me. An entire eco rainforest experience from the very top of the canopy to the river below. And my goodness it was spectacular.

Now, when you chose the cruising life you don’t always get a lot of time in each city, but there are always ways to cram as much in as possible. And the Gibson Family is incredible at that.

We also don’t always do excursions, we usually just do our own thing, but on this trip, we wanted to take full advantage of the incredible cities that we stopped in and make sure we saw as much as humanly possible. And in the rainforest, we literally saw it all.

We docked in Limon, Costa Rica and quickly hopped on a 2 hour bus ride to the middle of the country to the Braulio Carillo National Park.

We were taken up in a gondola that all ran off clean energy and did not disrupt the wildlife in anyway. We started off in the middle level of the rainforest. I love the environment, but for some reason I was never able to retain the actual names of each level of the rainforest ecosystem so we’re going to just call it the middle.

We passed every kind of butterfly, birds whizzed passed us, our guide sat behind us and was filled with knowledge of the rainforest, if she didn’t know it she pulled out a book that had the answer in it. She was in her early 20s and had studied at a university in Chicago, like any good southern girl, she quickly headed back home after her schooling to escape that frigid weather. We had a lot in common.

The gondola pulled us up to the very tops of the trees, we were practically sitting on top of of one of the tallest trees. If you looked down you saw the most spectacular view of the rainforest, you saw where a tree had fallen and new growth was reaching for the sunlight, swarms of multi-colored birds dipping and dodging through the branches, monkeys jumping from branch to branch. As hard as we looked we never saw a sloth, which was pretty sad but we survived.

It pulled us through the top of the canopy (I remembered that name) and then slowly dropped lower and lower to the rainforest floor. Guys, I saw a tarantula. It was all curled up on a leaf and about the size of a large fist and creepy as hell but still so cool. Our gondola barely brushed over the plants and vines that grew on the bottom floor and it was easily 5 degrees cooler.

There are some very strange animals that are roaming the bottom floor including one that looks like a mix between an elephant and an ant-eater. They told us it was incredibly rare to see so we felt pretty lucky. Another animal was very similar to a dog but had a really long tail, and if you feed them you’re screwed so if you ever see one of these guys make sure you don’t feed them.

It was one of the most spectacular experiences and I could have stayed int here all day. But, we had the rest of the country to see and just a few hours left.

We had LOTS of traffic on our way to the river. It turns out that the Chinese have been assisting the Costa Rican government in building new roads and a better road system. It was very interesting to learn about the different Chinese influences throughout Central and South America and their presence in the ports, I rarely get political on here so I definitely encourage you all to do your own research a little more and learn about it all.They were bringing their own workers in and employing very few Costa Rican natives.

Regardless of who was building the roads though the traffic was horrendous and it took us almost 3 hours to get to our next destination. That was the only downside to this excursion. The positive to that was we were able to really look at the wildlife and agriculture on the side of the road and we got to see a sloth, so, worth it.

Once we got to the river we boarded a boat that was so low to the water you would have thought all the people in there would sink it. But it just floated right on down the river. I sat up at the very front to get the best pictures. We saw Caymans, small crocodiles, monkeys, every kind of bird imaginable, iguanas, and butterflies. We passed by an old building that was run by the Costa Rican police and where they put all the boats confiscated for drug running. We passed by residential houses, restaurants on the water, and personal docks.

It was down right gorgeous. So pristine and natural, we did piss of a Cayman though because we got a little too close but it made for a good video. And there was a family of bats living under one of the palms, and a couple of kittens that let me cuddle them.

If you can’t tell I like animals.

Costa Rica was incredible. I want to come back and take more time in the rainforest and visit the Arenal Volcano and see some more beaches but I think this was a pretty great introduction to such a beautiful county.