Day 2 - December 17 - San Jose to Tortuguero
We were up early and left the hotel at 6:45 am. At this point we met
the rest of our group which arrived very late the previous evening.
We had divided our luggage up into two parts, one that would go with us
to Tortuguero, and one that would join us later in Quepos. This was
done because the travel from Tortuguero to Quepos was done on chartered
planes with weight limits.
We got on the road directly, and headed over the central mountain range
on CR 32. We traveled through Parque
Nacional Braulio Carillo. According to Jimmy, this park has no
public access, and is meant to preserve the forest. In fact all of the
parks that we visited had very limited access.
When we reached the flat land on the other side of the mountains, we
stopped off for a Costa
Rican breakfast.
There was another bus there
with another tour group. We further divided our luggage into what we
wanted to take with us in the kayaks and what would meet us at the
Mawamba lodge. The other bus took this luggage. There are no roads to
Tortuguero. It can be reached only by boat or plane. The other tour
group met up with power boats for the final leg of their journey to
Tortuguero and that is how our luggage went.
After breakfast, we continued to travel east, and when we left CR 32,
we met up with a truck that had our river kayaks and our two river
guides, Renaldo and Ernesto. We continued to travel on side roads
through small villages. We eventually entered a banana plantation. At
the entrance to the plantation, we dis-embarked from the bus and
had to
walk across a nasty sponge full of some sort of fungicide. Then back in
the bus and we traveled to the point where we met the Rio Suerte. Jimmy
tells me that this was somewhere between the villages of Gallo Pinto
and Canta Gallo.
At around 11:30am, we
put into the river. David and Michael were in
singles, Marina and Don were in a double. We did see some monkeys
just before we departed.
A map modifed from the National Geographic map of our route:
Costa Rica Adventure Map,
copyright National Geographic Maps. Used with permission.
The red and cyan dots are the route we took.
The river was slow moving. At about 2:30pm, just before we entered the
Parque Nacional Tortuguero, we
stopped for lunch. The guides provided
box lunches before we started our river journey. Then it was back into
the river, and we continued until the river joined the canal "Cano
Chiquero" (I think). At that point there were two boats from the
Mawamba lodge. One took those who were done kayaking directly to the
lodge, the other hung back with us. We did get some beer at that point.
We continued to paddle towards the lodge, and now that we did not have
current to take us along, we had to work. Michael made it all the way,
the rest of our family decided to take the remaining boat after making
it about half way there. A map of the park from the park web site is
shown below.
The point on the map that says Rio Suerte is where we first met up with
the boats from the Mawamba Lodge. The balance of the kayaking would
headed down the waterways to the lodge, passing park headquarters.
Here is a link to maps.google.com,
centered more or less on the Mawamba Lodge. Google Earth will let you
zoom in a bit further than maps.google.com.
I don't really have a map that does the park justice. There are more
canals from the logging days that are not shown. I did not have my gps
on to track our progress as I did not want to get the gps wet.
After we met up with our luggage, we went to our rooms, took a much
needed shower and headed to the bar. David had a marvelous looking (and
tasting) daiquiri.
Then dinner with the group at the hotel.
Images from this day:
Here is a neat tree at the place we had breakfast:
Pictures of the place we put in:
And once on the river:
and at lunch:
This page maintained by Don Samuels
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This page last updated January, 20, 2007