Casa Orquidea and Golfito, Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica
We are in Costa Rica! This morning we woke up and came outside to see, for many of us the first time, the beautiful Costa Rica. On deck we could see the emerald jungles surrounding a beautiful gulf with calm waters, in front of us there were millions and millions of trees that conform one of the most diverse tropical rain forests in the world. A big reward was waiting for us just by stepping out of the cabin, but we had many adventures to come.
We started getting into our Zodiacs while several bottle-nose dolphins played around the ship. We planned to visit a beautiful botanical garden called Casa Orquidea, yes a botanical garden in the middle of nowhere! This amazing garden can only be reached by water; there are no roads or any other way to get there. The owners of this place decided to move from the US in to the forest of Costa Rica to have a happy and relaxed life. They started planting tropical plants around the house some for looks and some for food and as years went by their collection started getting so big and beautiful that when people visited they fell in love with this place and without planning on it, a business started.
The trails in this garden sent us through a journey of color and taste not only did we get to enjoyed the endless shapes, colors and forms of its flowers, but we also got to taste some incredible tropical fruits like the cashew “pear” and the miracle fruit which makes tart lemon taste very sweet after you eat it. Besides the amazing collection of plants, we got so see an unbelievable amount of birds that added even more color to the place. Birds like the red legged honey creepers, tanagers, toucans, parrots, macaws, manakins and euphonias are just some of the names that the naturalists were pointing out. It was not just birds that were spotted this morning, but a rare sighting of a white nose coatis was in store for us. Relatives of the raccoon, the coatis are a neotropical mammal with a versatile morphology that allows them to roam the forests on the ground and the canopy.
After this experience we got to swim from the stern and a brown booby joined us; it was literally just inches away from the guests and seemed just curious as to what we were doing. All back on board for another great meal, we moved towards our afternoon site, Golfito. There we boarded Zodiacs to border the rain forest of the area in the search of wildlife, and wildlife we found. Capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, toucans, spoonbills, ibis, herons and even a well hidden tree boa that could not escape from the sharp vision of eagle-eyed Henry one of our Zodiac drivers. To end the day, a heavy and warm tropical rain fell on us and some of our Californian guest were commenting on how the 30 minutes of rain was more than all the rainfall in their area for an entire year.
