Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica
With a beautiful sunrise we started our day with at Golfo Dulce, near Casa Orquideas. Very easily from the balconies, a group of Bottle-nosed Dolphins (Tursius truncatus) was seen swimming near our ship National Geographic Sea Lion, also enjoying the nice location where we dropped anchor. All of the whole activity from the morning gave us even more enthusiasm to disembark at Casa Orquideas.
As we arrived, it became almost impossible to ignore a group of Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) that were feeding on a Beach Almond Tree, they were so obvious and cooperative that we ran to have a closer look of them. The big surprise was that just next to the already mentioned tree, there was another fruiting tree of Malayan Apples (Syzygium malaccense), with a family of White-throated Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus capucinus), Chestnut-mandible Toucans (Ramphastus swansonii), and Fiery-billed Aracari (Ptereglossus sulfratus) feeding on its fruits, “it was the hotspot of the species for the morning”.
We then started walking the gardens at Casa Orquideas, and the incredible collection of flowering plants and orchids kept us very entertained during the whole morning by admiring the great biodiversity that we have in Central America and in countries like Costa Rica and Panama.
In the afternoon we navigated the Esquinas River with a beautiful ecosystem of mangroves on both sides, and also we had great sightings of Boas, Herons, White Ibises, Kingfishers and other animals that live and mingle all together here and gave us a better understanding of how important this place is for the environment. By the end of the day we remember all these fantastic things and thought: “This was an awesome day”.
