Costa Rica Day 10: El Rio Sierpe

Our last full day in Costa Rica was a hectic one indeed! We started off the morning at 6:00, embarking on a motorboat tour of the mangroves along the Sierpe River. We “mangrovers” were able to spot a group of white-faced monkeys, a couple of crocodiles, a handful of baselisks, a pair of nesting macaws, and a boa constrictor on our trip, that was seven hours total in length.


This left plenty of time for activities the rest of the day! After a light lunch, Priya and I trekked down through the forest to the hotel’s beach, where we found a large troupe of white-faced monkeys, playing a game with one of the families’ pet dog! Priya fervently took photographs as I enjoyed the sand.
















We raced up from the beach back to our room to convene for afternoon horseback riding on the beach. The four of us galloped into the sunset, my horse Suaso enamored of the waves and constantly hungry (much like myself).


We got back from our equine adventures just in time for the first course of our meal before we left for a nighttime tour with Tracy, the Bug Lady of Osa. This incredible woman and her husband showed us all sorts of nighttime creatures in the forest that we never would have come close to noticing otherwise, such as the tailless -- scorpion, trap door spiders, and the famous red-eyed tree frog. Her anecdotes about the natural world along the way were eye-opening and awe-inspiring, and we couldn’t look at the forest the same way as we walked back to the hotel for dinner.

















We just got back after another wonderful meal at La Paloma Lodge, our warm home for the past few days.

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