Pachira Lodge

On our second day at the Pachira Lodge we worked out why this place is in the rainforest. It bucketed down most of the night as storm after storm rolled through. We woke up to the sound of the Howler Monkeys, which can be heard up to about 5 kilometres away. They have a special cavity near the vocal cords that gives them the ability to make this unique sound. We might have got out of bed to try to find them if the rain hadn’t beed so incessant.

Following breakfast, we had a nature walk scheduled, which did go ahead despite another torrential rainstorm, something we are used to… but not so much the for the Europeans. The guide showed good resilience to keep on task in both english and spanish. As a tour group, we too also showed much resilience to follow along. The problem with getting wet here is that nothing actually dries. I had a little mishap with the boat trip yesterday that resulted in my camera and computer both getting wet in transit, so I’m hoping they’ll dry out once we get away from the humidity of the coast.

After lunch we went across the river to the village of Tortuguero. There is a museum largely about the hunting of turtles here from about the 1930s until 1970. There are no known indigenous people in this area as it is quite inhospitable, but english pirates were known to come here to hunt the turtles. In the 1930s a sawmill was established so timber and turtles were the main industries here, that supported a population of about 400 people.

There is now a turtle research facility and the sawmill has closed, but with the advent of tourism and conservation there are now about 1800 residents. There is a strip full of restaurants and souvenir shops and you can of course buy a coconut and drink rum and coconut milk.

We went out to the beach which is black sand and driftwood that was very reminiscent of the New Zealand west coast… minus the palm trees and the balmy temperatures here. I also don’t recall a man selling coconuts and Rum at Haast, perhaps an improvement that could be considered.

Following our wander around the town, we stopped off and had some drinks with a couple of our fellow tourists, a father and daughter from France, who were lovely company and gave us a good end to our day.