Corcovado National Park & Caletas Protected Area
After a calm night in Drake Bay, the Sea Voyager left anchor and sailed a few minutes down the coast of the Osa Peninsula, where Corocovado National Park is located, the largest park in the country (100,000 acres). This morning our plans are to make a landing at San Pedrillo, where the park headquarters are located.
All of us were welcomed onshore by a flock of loud, red, flying parrots or in poetic words “the most exciting combination of blues, yellows, and reds on the feathers of a o\loud bird,” or in other words, scarlet macaws. But that was not even the beginning of what Mother Nature had planned for our visit. Some of us walked to a refreshing waterfall, while others hiked for over three hours through the wonders of the rainforest. All of the walks were rewarded by great sightings of spider monkeys, white-nosed coatis, white-faced capuchin monkeys, agoutis, plus many birds.
Around noon we were back on board and ready to sail for 20 minutes to Caletas Buffer Zone, a private area that surrounds Corcovado which helps to increase the size of the park. This area is owned, administrated and protected by private hands. And this is where the galley crew had set for us a great barbeque with hamburgers, ribs, corn, pasta salad and chewy brownies… As we were ready to close the encounter with our dessert, a local man sighted olive-ridley turtles hatching on the sandy beach (today’s photo). As if it couldn’t get any better!
Amazingly, we had the chance to see around 60 little turtles digging themselves from the sand and running down to the surf, down to the big blue ocean. The ocean will be their home for the next 40 years until they reach sexual maturity and then the females leave the ocean just to lay eggs on the same beach where they were born. Yes, they will remain their whole life in the water and only the females will be back on land. There she digs with her rear flippers a 2-foot-deep chamber where she will lay around a hundred golf ball-sized eggs, which incubate for around two months. Normally they hatch during the night or cool early mornings when there is less heat, less predators, and less light so they can easily fine the whitish waves breaking at the shore.
But for our luck, not theirs, we were admiring one of Mother Nature’s miracles, an animal that has been doing this for the last 230 million years. And if natural selection works, they are doing this well enough to still be here with us on planet Earth. Are we doing things so well?
After a calm night in Drake Bay, the Sea Voyager left anchor and sailed a few minutes down the coast of the Osa Peninsula, where Corocovado National Park is located, the largest park in the country (100,000 acres). This morning our plans are to make a landing at San Pedrillo, where the park headquarters are located.
All of us were welcomed onshore by a flock of loud, red, flying parrots or in poetic words “the most exciting combination of blues, yellows, and reds on the feathers of a o\loud bird,” or in other words, scarlet macaws. But that was not even the beginning of what Mother Nature had planned for our visit. Some of us walked to a refreshing waterfall, while others hiked for over three hours through the wonders of the rainforest. All of the walks were rewarded by great sightings of spider monkeys, white-nosed coatis, white-faced capuchin monkeys, agoutis, plus many birds.
Around noon we were back on board and ready to sail for 20 minutes to Caletas Buffer Zone, a private area that surrounds Corcovado which helps to increase the size of the park. This area is owned, administrated and protected by private hands. And this is where the galley crew had set for us a great barbeque with hamburgers, ribs, corn, pasta salad and chewy brownies… As we were ready to close the encounter with our dessert, a local man sighted olive-ridley turtles hatching on the sandy beach (today’s photo). As if it couldn’t get any better!
Amazingly, we had the chance to see around 60 little turtles digging themselves from the sand and running down to the surf, down to the big blue ocean. The ocean will be their home for the next 40 years until they reach sexual maturity and then the females leave the ocean just to lay eggs on the same beach where they were born. Yes, they will remain their whole life in the water and only the females will be back on land. There she digs with her rear flippers a 2-foot-deep chamber where she will lay around a hundred golf ball-sized eggs, which incubate for around two months. Normally they hatch during the night or cool early mornings when there is less heat, less predators, and less light so they can easily fine the whitish waves breaking at the shore.
But for our luck, not theirs, we were admiring one of Mother Nature’s miracles, an animal that has been doing this for the last 230 million years. And if natural selection works, they are doing this well enough to still be here with us on planet Earth. Are we doing things so well?
