Bananas, Frijoles, & Monkeys Part 2

Part 2 is going to include days 3 and 4 of the excursion. I'm trying to combo up the days because we spent 2 days in each location. It also makes for fewer posts and less writing for me. Yay! We left San Jose, which holds 60% of the entire population of Costa Rica, and made our way to Tortuguero Park. Tortuguero Park is a nature conservation that is a main destination for the green sea turtles to lay their eggs. It also has tons of other wildlife.

On our way to the boat dock (Did I mention that Tortuguero is only accessible by boat or plane?), we stopped at a butterfly garden. At the butterfly garden, we saw the most gorgeous blue morpho butterflies. The outer side of the morpho is where the beautiful blue is. Unfortunately, we weren't able to photograph any in flight because the lighting was poor and they're just too quick! I did have one land on me. Afterward, we went to a banana plantation. We saw the banana runners. These men would wear a harness attached to 25 bunches of bananas and run them from the field to the processing center. Crazy! I also learned that banana plants are not a tree, but an herb.

Once we got to Tortuguero, we were constantly looking for wildlife. At our lodge, we searched for red-eyed tree frogs near the pool and enjoyed watching the montezuma oropendolas. When we weren't looking for animals at our lodge, we walked to the Caribbean Sea. Yes, we were sandwiched between the rain forest and the Caribbean Sea. On our boat rides, we saw iguanas, JC lizards, monkeys, caymans and tons of different kinds of birds. It was pretty tricky because most of the animals (excluding the snowy white egret and the great white egret) have great camouflage. I was pretty good at it, but my hubster had a rough time. He attributed my great skills to looking at Where is Waldo books. I corrected him. I had I SPY books. We really enjoyed the sense of community that we noticed at Tortuguero when we walked through the village.