Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui Frog
After deciding to get out of San José the previous day I’d booked a trip to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí, a small agricultural town in the North-East of the country with a river that goes all the way to Nicaragua.
Right at 6.30 the lovely Gina turned up at the hotel with an air conditioned mini-bus. The other people on the trip were 2 Mexican couples, 2 Colombians, a Spanish lady and surprisingly 2 Chinese guys. I was the last to be collected so our next stop was Cartago, the old capital of Costa Rica until they lost out to San José in a civil war lasting all of seven minutes.
We then drove up to the top of Irazú volcano. At 3,432m the walk up to the peak was breathtaking in more ways than one. It was a slightly hazy day but our guide claimed that it is possible to see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on a good day. The summit is divided into 3 craters, the largest of which contains an extremely acidic lake. Whilst looking down into the crater a familiar voice said ‘Hallo’ – it was the two Austrians I’d met at La Fortuna, whilst looking up at the Arenal volcano.
Although a sunny day it was quite chilly at the top of the volcano so we were grateful to head down to the base, where we enjoyed a traditional Costa Rican breakfast. This was similar to those I’ve had every day for the last two weeks except surrounded by a large number of hummingbirds. I was vaguely expecting it, but the horror on the Colombians and Mexicans faces at the eating habits of the Chinese was quite apparent. These two were particularly bad, slurping the coffee via a spoon and loudly smacking their mouths which hovered at most a couple of inches above the plate whilst they shovelled and sucked in the food.
We then took 90 minutes to drive through the Braulio Carrillo National Park during which we learnt some random facts. Just to show I was listening:
- Despite being land locked between Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south, Costa Rica has disproportionately large territorial waters, so also has sea borders with Venezuela and Colombia.
- The last building we passed before entering the park is on the continental divide, so the water on one side of the mountain ends up in the Caribbean, the other side ends up in the Pacific.
- A 750m tunnel we passed through is the longest and the shortest in Costa Rica.
- 30% of Costa Rica is designated a National Park or conservation area.
- Costa Rica is 0.42% of the worlds surface yet holds 5-6% of the worlds species.
- Jurassic Park and Congo were filmed in this park.
- We crossed a bridge over two rivers. On starts inside park and is clean. The other starts up the volcano and carries all the associated sediment and
impurities. - As the first mountain range after the Caribbean Sea the area gets 200 inches of rain a year.
- On the other side of the park the roads passed through huge fields of onions, bananas and pineapples. To identify a good pineapple the leaves should stick up from crown at 90 degrees. A pineapples seeds are in the crown. If planted the first growth will be big and juicy, the second smaller, the third even smaller and the fourth is the smallest that could be sold.
Full of facts we arrived at Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí. Here we boarded a boat to spend two hours slowly passing many birds, monkeys, crocodiles and bats to reach a private lodge, right on time for a lunch which was entirely unnecessary given the excessive heat.
From here we waddled round the frog sanctuary, snake collection and butterfly garden before riding some well fed looking horses back along the river.
Great round up of facts about this beautiful country. And thanks for highlighting your trip to Irazu. It’s not on the main tourist trail but is still a very beautiful and unique area and a great day trip from San Jose.