The weather has been quite nice the last couple days so I haven't spent much time writing recently. But today I am in Bocas Del Toro on the island of Colon and it's been raining all day, so I want to tell you all about my trip to Cahuita National Park in Costa Rica, right next to Puerto Viejo!
The National Park is donation based, which means you can pay nothing to get in. Awesome when you're a budget traveler. The bus ride there and back was about $2.50. When you show up at the entrance to the park, you're on a beautiful beach with a volleyball court, showers, bathrooms, everything you'd need for a nice day at the beach. But that wasn't why I came to Cahuita. I came for the bountiful nature, and boy-oh-boy was I in for a treat!
A friend of mine had told me that she went to the NP with a guide and saw tons of wildlife, and I was not sure if the guide was really necessary to see everything. Luckily I didn't need anything. The weather was perfect and there were all sorts of people on the trail who had paid for guides, whenever I felt like I might be missing something I just looked at the guides to see if there was something that they were pointing out. Every time that I saw the guides pointing though, I would walk over and see that they were pointing at a certain type of tree, or a plant, and I quickly realized that I was spotting more wildlife than the guided tours might be.
Within two minutes on the path, I'd seen more than a dozen lizards, a raccoon, and the famous blue butterflies (whose name I can't remember). By the end of the trip I had seen an ant-eater, howling monkeys, white-headed monkeys (one of which tried to steal my GoPro), an eyelash viper, a sloth, and lots of other beautiful critters that I can't name (one giant black grasshopper with orange antennae).
I didn't capture pictures of everything but here is what I have:
The National Park is donation based, which means you can pay nothing to get in. Awesome when you're a budget traveler. The bus ride there and back was about $2.50. When you show up at the entrance to the park, you're on a beautiful beach with a volleyball court, showers, bathrooms, everything you'd need for a nice day at the beach. But that wasn't why I came to Cahuita. I came for the bountiful nature, and boy-oh-boy was I in for a treat!
A friend of mine had told me that she went to the NP with a guide and saw tons of wildlife, and I was not sure if the guide was really necessary to see everything. Luckily I didn't need anything. The weather was perfect and there were all sorts of people on the trail who had paid for guides, whenever I felt like I might be missing something I just looked at the guides to see if there was something that they were pointing out. Every time that I saw the guides pointing though, I would walk over and see that they were pointing at a certain type of tree, or a plant, and I quickly realized that I was spotting more wildlife than the guided tours might be.
Within two minutes on the path, I'd seen more than a dozen lizards, a raccoon, and the famous blue butterflies (whose name I can't remember). By the end of the trip I had seen an ant-eater, howling monkeys, white-headed monkeys (one of which tried to steal my GoPro), an eyelash viper, a sloth, and lots of other beautiful critters that I can't name (one giant black grasshopper with orange antennae).
I didn't capture pictures of everything but here is what I have:
RSS Feed
