Day 2 - December 17 - San Jose to Tortuguero


We were up early and left the hotel at 6:45 am. At this point we met the rest of our group which arrived very late the previous evening.

We had divided our luggage up into two parts, one that would go with us to Tortuguero, and one that would join us later in Quepos. This was done because the travel from Tortuguero to Quepos was done on chartered planes with weight limits.

We got on the road directly, and headed over the central mountain range on  CR 32. We traveled through Parque Nacional Braulio Carillo. According to Jimmy, this park has no public access, and is meant to preserve the forest. In fact all of the parks that we visited had very limited access.

When we reached the flat land on the other side of the mountains, we stopped off for a Costa Rican breakfast.

There was another bus there with another tour group. We further divided our luggage into what we wanted to take with us in the kayaks and what would meet us at the Mawamba lodge. The other bus took this luggage. There are no roads to Tortuguero. It can be reached only by boat or plane. The other tour group met up with power boats for the final leg of their journey to Tortuguero and that is how our luggage went.

After breakfast, we continued to travel east, and when we left CR 32, we met up with a truck that had our river kayaks and our two river guides, Renaldo and Ernesto. We continued to travel on side roads through small villages. We eventually entered a banana plantation. At the entrance to the plantation, we dis-embarked from the bus and had to walk across a nasty sponge full of some sort of fungicide. Then back in the bus and we traveled to the point where we met the Rio Suerte. Jimmy tells me that this was somewhere between the villages of Gallo Pinto and Canta Gallo.

At around 11:30am, we put into the river. David and Michael were in singles, Marina and Don were in a double.  We did see some monkeys just before we departed.

A map modifed from the National Geographic map of our route:

Costa Rica Adventure Map, copyright National Geographic Maps. Used with permission.

The red and cyan dots are the route we took.


The river was slow moving. At about 2:30pm, just before we entered the Parque Nacional Tortuguero, we stopped for lunch. The guides provided box lunches before we started our river journey. Then it was back into the river, and we continued until the river joined the canal "Cano Chiquero" (I think). At that point there were two boats from the Mawamba lodge. One took those who were done kayaking directly to the lodge, the other hung back with us. We did get some beer at that point. We continued to paddle towards the lodge, and now that we did not have current to take us along, we had to work. Michael made it all the way, the rest of our family decided to take the remaining boat after making it about half way there. A map of the park from the park web site is shown below.



The point on the map that says Rio Suerte is where we first met up with the boats from the Mawamba Lodge. The balance of the kayaking would headed down the waterways to the lodge, passing park headquarters.

Here is a link to maps.google.com, centered more or less on the Mawamba Lodge. Google Earth will let you zoom in a bit further than maps.google.com.

I don't really have a map that does the park justice. There are more canals from the logging days that are not shown. I did not have my gps on to track our progress as I did not want to get the gps wet.

After we met up with our luggage, we went to our rooms, took a much needed shower and headed to the bar. David had a marvelous looking (and tasting) daiquiri.
Then dinner with the group at the hotel.



Images from this day:
Here is a neat tree at the place we had breakfast:



Pictures of the place we put in:










And once on the river:







and at lunch:





  
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This page last updated January, 20, 2007