Costa Rica – Day 4 – Tortuguero wildlife tour, Guapiles

Water blackened by tannin from the vegetation reflects what's on shore.

Water blackened by tannin from the vegetation reflects what’s on shore.

Sunrise over the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica

Sunrise over the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica

This morning several of us got up to watch the sun rise over the beach at Tortuguero.  Days in Costa Rica are not much longer or shorter than 12 hours because it is so close to the equator.  Perhaps because of cloud cover, we also didn’t get the see the sun rise in an orange ball of fire the way it does at home.  It just started to get light, and was daylight within about 10 minutes.

An iguana suns himself.

An iguana suns himself.

Before breakfast we did a wildlife tour by boat through the rivers and canals of Tortuguero. The waterways snake around in all directions. They are called canals, which made me think they were dug out by people, but they are all natural. We saw several monkeys in trees, a sloth at the very top of a huge tree, lots of birds, several iguanas and lizards sunning themselves, and a caiman near a Canadian research station that we happened across.

A monkey looks down on us.

A monkey looks down on us.

The highlight was running across a group of capuchin monkeys getting into several buckets of food waste that someone had left out on a dock to be picked up. They were having a field day, having lucked into free food supply. I got 3 minutes of great video of the monkeys getting in and out of the food. Another highlight was boating back into a branch of the river and watching the water turn black from the tannin in the trees. The black water reflected the image of the trees on the shore — even the depth seemed to reflect so that it looked like the trees were growing down into the river.

Oropendola nests.

Oropendola nests.

One of the most interesting and ubiquitous birds we have seen — and heard — is the oropendola.  They build nests like I’ve never seen in the U.S. — the nests are in bulbous formations that hang from tree branches.  They also sound like nothing I’ve ever heard before.  The name “oro” or gold refers to the birds’ yellow plumage, and “pendola” refers to the hanging nests.  I won’t forget those birds anytime soon!

Bird seen on the river tour.

Bird seen on the river tour.

Later walking around in the town of Guapiles, our resident director Paul pointed me to passion fruit, which I’ve never had before.  It doesn’t look like much on the outside, but the inside is something special. It looks like caviar and tastes sweet but not sugary. Hopefully I can find this fruit at the Whole Foods in Columbus because I can’t bring back the bunch that I bought here, and I definitely want to eat this again.

In the evening it was back to Earth University.

Costa Rica – Day 3 – Beach cleanup at Tortuguero National Park

The boat ahead of us makes a hairpin turn on the river to Tortuguero.

The boat ahead of us makes a turn in the river to Tortuguero.

Boats to Tortuguero

Boats to Tortuguero

Today we traveled to Tortuguero National Park in the northeast Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.  This is one of the country’s 26 national parks, and the one most known for hosting the hatching grounds for several species of endangered sea turtle (“tortuga” means turtle).   It is also known for its network of rivers and canals, accessible only by boat.  To get there, we had to travel about 2 hours on back roads to the boat station, then transfer to a boat that took us another hour up a river with all kinds of curves and switchbacks.

The grounds of Laguna Lodge.

The grounds of Laguna Lodge.

The lodge and grounds where we stayed at Tortuguero were gorgeous, and the food was terrific.  People are not supposed to swim in the ocean, but the lodge had a pretty nice pool.  That afternoon we did a service project cleaning up a stretch of beach near the hotel, and I saw first hand why people don’t swim in the ocean: It is filled with plastic and styrofoam pollution.

Plastic pieces washed up from the ocean litters the beach.

Plastic pieces washed up from the ocean litters the beach.

This photo is a very typical look at the beach. First, the sand is black because it’s all from volcanoes. It’s very rich. But second, you can see all the pieces of plastic and styrofoam in the seaweed. The beach is covered with plastic washed up by the ocean tides from around the world. Most of the pieces are small, an inch or two at most. This makes cleanup back-breaking and challenging work because you are bent over all the time. If you are lucky, you can sit in a piece of driftwood and sift through it.

Beach cleanup at Tortuguero National Park.

Beach cleanup at Tortuguero National Park.

Besides plastic and styrofoam pieces, I found several small glass vials, some combs, nail polish, several shoe bottoms, and a toothbrush. Frankly, it’s disgusting. What the h*** are we doing to this planet??  What freaks me out the most is, most of this has happened in my lifetime – my generation did this. What freaks me out next is, how on earth do you clean all this up?  Our student group of 14 filled several large trash bags in an hour, and we only covered maybe a half-mile of beach.  I have read about this issue before, but seeing the scale and complexity of it for yourself is totally different.

This village along the river in Tortuguero held a small disco where we hung out at night.

This village along the river in Tortuguero held a small disco where we hung out at night.

An organization called 5 Gyres recently did a study showing there are 270 trillion tons of plastic in the oceans, or 5 trillion pieces, most of them small pieces of plastics just like I saw washed up on the beach in Tortuguero.  Many people have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is actually two large patches of plastic garbage swirling in the northern gyre of Pacific Ocean.  It turns out there are actually five such gyres in the oceans, each graced with its own garbage patch, as well as plastic spread through the rest of the ocean.  Scientists studying the Midway Atoll,  a group of small islands in the Pacific 2000 miles from the nearest continent, found dead sea birds, and the stomachs of those birds were filled with plastic.  Plastic pollution also hampered the search for the missing Malaysian aircraft last year.  Our pollution is so pervasive that scientists say it is actually creating a new layer in the geological record of the planet.

The entrance to Tortuguero National Park.

The entrance to Tortuguero National Park.

What can we do to address a problem as widespread and complicated as this?   It is certainly going to take some creative thinking to solve.  Maybe have inmates scour the beaches and do the hard cleanup work that we did?  Could some kind of machine be invented to suck up the plastic and styrofoam but leave organic matter and sand?  This solar-powered water wheel is cleaning up plastic pollution in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and this young man has invented a plastic-catching system to clean up the oceans.

Fortunately it is not yet turtle season in Costa Rica – apparently the locals come out and clean up every year for that. They love the turtles. I want to come back sometime and volunteer for the Sea Turtle Conservancy or another turtle conservation group.