Corcovado National Park

Rivaling the trip I took to Chirripó was a trip I took to Corcovado National Park in July. It was amazing-and reminded me yet again why so many people visit Costa Rica. I took advantage of the two week mid school year break to visit the park, as well as visit my friend Barton R., his host family, and his site. I stayed at his house a few days before we went to the park, and stayed two days afterward as well. It was super interesting visiting his host family-his host parents raise chickens-so the whole house smells of chicken poop-and right next to the sink where one brushes his teeth-they might be de-feathering and cleaning dead chickens. Because it was vacation-there was all sorts of family in and out of the house-add in five Peace Corps volunteers and it was pretty crazy.

I was lucky to visit the park with five amazing guys-Barton and Kyle from my TEFL group, and Elliot, Andrew, and Jonathan from the Community Economic Development group that formed the other half of Tico 21-my Peace Corps training group. Our trip to the park was three long days of action. We were up at 4:30 am the first day for an hour and a half ride into the park in Barton's host uncle's beat up pick up truck. Out of the truck, backpacks on, and we hit the beach. Corcovado National Park is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet-and maybe the most biodiverse in the Americas. In order to protect this-much of the trail to and from the ranger stations and the campsite are along the beach. We hiked all day-I want to say something like 21 K, arrived at the ranger station, got our tents set up, changed out of our shoes-and headed to the beach in hopes of spotting a bull shark or otters. Barton and Kyle saw the bull shark, I was too slow to follow their lead and spot it. We spent the second day making two different hikes in the trails surrounding the ranger station-as well as napping and relaxing. One of these hikes was at the break of dawn-as that's the best time to see animals. The third day we were up well before light again-made a quick breakfast-and were off to hike the 21 K back to the park entrance-where Barton's host uncle picked up back up.

Our packs weren't crazy heavy during the trip-and much lighter on the way out. At the ranger station there are rooms-but they were full-and we opted for the floor anyways. There is a large covered area where you can pitch tents-the park provides foam mattresses. We just brought mosquito nets and rope-which is pretty much a tent-just that everyone can see in! Along with that-we brought in all our food for the trip and packed out all our trash. Barton had a camp stove, so we could cook our breakfasts and dinners. We had oatmeal for breakfast, PB&Js for lunch, oranges, apples, granola bars, and trail mix for snacks, and spaghetti for dinner.

The main point of visiting Corcovado National Park is to see wildlife. We had great success. It has primary and secondary lowland tropical rainforest, which is pretty awesome to walk through and check out on its own-but the plethora of animals makes it a real treat. It's hard to take pictures of monkeys-as they move a lot between leaves and branches. Actually, this is true for most animals-so, I elected to take videos of some of the animals we saw. There are five of them, but most are short, and some even feature informative narration! Along with these animals, we also saw an anteater, squirrel monkeys, white faced capuchins, howler monkeys, a sea turtle (above), tinamou, great curassow, scarlet macaw, and all sorts of birds, lizards, and insects (lots of spider webs).

A video showing some of the ants we saw on the trip. Did you know the mass of all the ants on earth combined is about equal to the mass of all the humans?

It was crazy how close we could get to the coatis before they would scurry away. 

Monkeys are awesome. Many times the rest of the group had to get me going, because I could just stand and watch and take videos of them all afternoon. 

Corcovado National Park is full of hermit crabs. I couldn't not take a video. 

This is kind of the grand-daddy of the animals to see in the park (besides jaguars that no one sees), as there are only four species of tapir in the world, and the Baird's is the only one in Central America-and Corcovado National Park is by far the best place in Costa Rica to spot one. We saw a guide stopped ahead on the trail-he held his hand up to quiet us-and then we saw this tapir-super close-just going about its business eating vegetation.