Costa Rica Tales or Tails?

 

Have you ever stayed on top of a cliff overlooking a rainforest river? I did in a Costa Rican home above the Rio Claro River. The American homeowner has lived there forever and built an identical house next door for rentals. He first came to the edge of this small town at the age of 18 with his father. They traveled in a dugout canoe with a tiny motor down the river for over an hour to this dirt road town on Drake Bay. His father married a local woman and built the house by hand. Homes with a view now sell for over a million dollars. The owner now lives here full time with his American wife overlooking the beautiful bay. His daughter lived in the guest cottage seven years ago. She ended up pregnant with a local boyfriend and had a baby. Then she moved back to the U.S. with her son and eventually got married. She has a two-year-old with her American husband. Life moves on and I wonder if she ever returns or has any contact with the Costa Rican father of her first child. Her mother flew back to the U.S. on one of the last evacuation flights during the pandemic. She is still there and I wonder when she will return. It is an isolated lifestyle in the middle of a lush rainforest. 

There used to be barbed wire across the local river to measure the water level. If the water was above the barbed wire, you couldn’t drive down the only road into town or you could get stuck in deep, muddy water. Today it is raining again in our tiny, rustic village on the Osa Peninsula. There are small groups of eco-tourists with backpacks walking the only street jumping over muddy puddles. The young men all had their shirts off which must be the cool thing to do down here. We went to a rooftop coffee shop with ceiling fans cutting through the humidity. A tiny backpacker almost fell over backward off the porch helping herself to a bottle of beer from the outdoor refrigerator. When she opened the bottle, the cap flew over the edge and landed loudly on the hot tin roof. She was upset and the waitress assured her it was fine and everyone laughed.

We watched a lot of birds and ants on our ocean view porch. Did you know that Army Ants carry pieces of leaves bigger than their bodies on their backs? They march in lines with their leaves and build piles. Fungi grow on the leaves and are their main source of food. Even stranger, someone taught a pet parakeet to cry like a human baby.  The bird ended up in a Costa Rican Wildlife Refuge. They couldn’t release the bird into the jungle or all the other parakeets would mimic the crying baby. Imagine if you walked into the woods and heard human babies crying everywhere. We took an Eco Boat and National Park hike on our last day in Drake Bay. In the pandemic, we had to wash our hands and take our wrist temperature taken to enter the Park. 

Our guide has worked at this National Park his entire career. He also arranges private tours through his company “Happy Feet.” He was upset that the boat crew didn’t give us life jackets. The guide’s father drowned on a boat in a storm with no life jackets on board. Our guide walked one hour to the only school here as a child. Now he conducts daily tours to the National Park. He likes to go off the beaten path and find animals like the tapir, monkeys, and crocodiles. Oh my! Humans are guests in this magical rainforest full of colorful, wild animals. Protect La Selva Costa Rica that many rainforest creatures call home!