As the days pass, I get more involved in this world of every hue of green. I am overtaken by a sweet latent love, which lives in me since the very first time I stepped on the Isthmus. It can get dormant as I move away to other destinations, but within one vision it comes back at its maximum passion and depth. I am a person of the tropics, but I belong to its dry forests. The coasts we have explored on board National Geographic Sea Lion this week, along the Pacific side of Panama and Costa Rica, are mostly rain forest; and so my love for it is revisiting me, once again, inspiring, alive, as good proper love never dies.
Our last visitor site of the week is the smallest national park in Costa Rica: Manuel Antonio. Cathedral Point, its southern hill, resembles an island; it actually was an island, later on attached to land by a sand bar. This is a formation known in geological terms as tombolo. The word comes from the Italian tombolo, derived from the Latin tumulus, meaning “mound.” A tombolo is actually a smaller version of an isthmus, therefore the appropriate place to culminate this trip, where we have explored the land bridge that joined two continents 2.4 million years ago. Central America has seen ever since the crossing of endless species of all kingdoms; and in analogy this tombolo in Manuel Antonio has had its own interchange of white-faced capuchin and howler monkeys, two- and three-toed sloths, agoutis, coatis, raccoons, green iguanas, grey-headed tanagers, pale-billed woodpeckers, ant birds, yellow-headed caracaras, just to name some of today’s wild encounters. After the hikes we had the opportunity to enjoy time at the beach.
Younger explorers have done very well along this learning expedition. They have mastered driving the Zodiacs and dancing salsa, they have found everything on the scavenger hunt lists and have surfed the waves on colorful boogie boards.
It’s been a good trip for all; it’s been a great week for me! Immersed in this green world, I am marveled by its powerful greatness; as Yann Martel wrote, “At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.”
