New Adventures in Drake Bay and Corcovado Costa Rica

It’s been a VERY interesting 24 hours!!!  We went to bed early because we needed to be up and eating breakfast at 5 am, to get ready for our trip to Corcovado National Park.  About 8 am it started raining along with thunder and lightning.  The intensity of the storm kept increasing until our cabin shuddered with some of the thunder.  Understand that our cabin has all open windows with no screens, although there is a substantial overhang.  The storm didn’t have much wind so although there were torrents of rain (falling on a metal roof!), we did stay dry.  But it was hard to sleep with all that noise and activity.  This storm continued all night!  At 4 am I was convinced that we would not be able to go on our trip today as the lightning was still lighting up the sky.  I figured this was a typical event for this area, which gets over 300 inches of rain per year.  We showed up for breakfast at 5 and our guide said he would talk to the captain of our boat about the conditions (it’s a 1 hour boat ride to our entry point at the park).  The consensus was to wait for 30 minutes and then decide.  It was then that I found out that the storm the night before was highly unusual  and that they hadn’t had one that bad in over a year!  Over 5 inches of  rain were measured.  Well, at 6 am, the sun broke through and it was a go!  And off we went!  Our reward was a beautiful rainbow.

6 am rainbow over Drake Bay

We did manage to find the rain again and had to pull out the rain gear, dodge some significant swells but by the time we disembarked the sky was clear.  The captain backed the boat up to the beach and we jumped out to wade shore.  A cooler of food also came along and was left at a picnic table near the beach.  Our guide, Jose, was wonderful and took us on several remote trails looking for various wild life.  We saw many birds, monkeys, butterflies, a tapir, along with stunning jungle scenery.  He had a spotting scope so we were really able to see the minute details of even very small butterflies, etc.  WE also saw three different kinds of monkeys, including babies.

We spotted this Mommy and baby monkey today.

There were also lots of incredible birds and I managed to get a great photo of this hawk.

Hawk on the beach

We had lunch on the beach and were greatly entertained by the hermit crabs which came in all sizes and had all kinds of shells for their homes.  Would have loved to have had a video of their antics.  We returned to our lodge, Las Caletas, at about 3 pm.  A nap and shower were quite refreshing.  At dinner tonight, we talked about tomorrow’s adventure – snorkeling off of Cano Island – departure not until 8 pm – will seem like the middle of the day!