Well today was the day. While our jobs in Cost Rica hung in the balance Ian and I decided to dip our feet a little deeper into the water and try out white water rafting instead of pondering our future. What better place to do this than the Pacuare River in Costa Rica? Here is our story. . .
The scene was set beautifully with a two hour drive through some of Costa Rica’s perfect landscape of rolling volcanic hills. We set off from our hotel in Escazu, San Jose at 6am on the dot. Of course quite a bit earlier than we were used to however, the breakfast stop just near Bueno Vista at about 8am was a picture perfect place to wake up and smell the super fresh air.
Scoffing down eggs, fresh fruit and Pinto Gallo (some local dish consisting of mushy rice, meat and beans) which they assured us was a normal local breakfast, we spent most of our time marveling at our next one day trip, the volcano Turrialba.
About 30mins after breakfast we arrived at our launch point into the river Pacuare. Suited up in our geeky but all important safety gear we listened intensely to our guide, Ali from Cost Rica Expeditions who was explaining the commands that would help us to stay out of the water.
Ok, so now we are off and paddling enjoying the scenery. From the get go we ran into Tucans, Turkey Vultures, Tiger Herrons, Cormorants and even a Three Toad Sloth. The frogs that we ran into at lucn were probarbly the most striking especially the Blue Jeans Frog (not it’s real name obviously) who was lumenous red with very blue legs. Didn’t get a photo of him though as all our gear that we didn’t want to get wet was in the car heading toward our final destination some 29km down river.
We would normally have stopped just on one of the many rocky outcrops for lunch however due to the on and off drizel we stopped at an native hut instead. Lunch was a pretty good spread that filled the hole left by all the paddling and gave us a good rest from the river. The deal that Costa Rica Expeditions have with the natives is that if they use the hut they must leave behind any left overs. Of course the kids don’t understand this and as soon as they hear us arrive they are there with thier hungry little shy eyes!
Most of the way along the river, water seemed to be ozzing out of the hills either by single drops off the jungle overhang, small creeks cut into the dirt or more dramatically by waterfall. This is one of the better water falls to photograph but the smaller ones are just as amazing.
We had loads more fun on the trip ending up just near the small town of Siquirres not too far from the Caribbean Coastal town of Limon. After a fruit cocktail and burning our photos to disk we climbed back in our very comfortable Huyndai mini bus and relaxed back through the two hour ride back to San Jose.
So that is just a little about our trip. There are plenty more action shots here on CyberSpeights Photo Archive.
Sounds like you had a great experience on the Pacuare. Very cool you had the chance to spot some exotic frogs, a sloth, and even a toucan! Another perfect day on the Pacuare, awesome.