Today we took a leisurely boat tour of the mangrove swamp at Damas Island, not far from Quepos. We were picked up at our hotel in one of the ubiquitious white Turismo vans you see all over Costa Rice, then drove through the town of Quepos, population ~26,000 on our way to the swamp.
On the way, our tour guide Elliot explained the typical makeup of a Costa Rican town - a Catholic church, a soccer field (soccer is like a religion in CR) and the school next to the soccer field. Education is mandatory and free in CR. If you don't enroll your child in school, the Ministry of Education will be knocking on your door! I suspect Quepos houses all the tourist trade workers that keep the hotels and tours in Manuel Antonio running! A typical house is a small single story affair probably of adobe, brightly painted, surrounded by an 8-10 foot gated entrance, sometimes topped with barbed wire. I initially thought these gates were meant to keep out monkeys and varmints, but every creature in Costa Rica climbs, so I think it's to keep out human burglars.
Once at the swamp we climbed into a flat bottomed boat and Elliot immediately began scanning for animals for us. First, the blue heron, which throws bits of fish into the river from it's last meal to attract the fish for its next meal, then a mangrove boa, and a green snake (almost impossible to spot), and a line of tiny resting long-nosed bats that looked like tarantulas from a distance.
And then a Jesus Christ Basilisk. Why that name? Because they can run across the river without sinking. Yes, they walk on water. How? They run fast (5 feet a second) and create air bubbles beneath their feet. They can cover 13 to 16 feet this way before sinking into the water. Our Jesus basilisk did not demonstrate this miraculous locomotion for us. Nor did we see caimans or crocodiles which also frequent this swamp. We did see leaf cutter ants. The worker ants in the colony cut and carry bits of leaves up to 20 times their own size, guided by the explorer ants that fly ahead of them, scouting out plants and emitting pheremones the worker ants follow. The ants are blind, hence the need for the scent trail. The colony also includes a Queen and soldier ants and male ants that fly off to form new colonies.
We also saw two different types of mangroves, a type of tree that has a massive crawling root system to hold it in place as the waters rise and fall. We are in the four month dry season, but in the eight month wet season the water can rise five feet more. more. Yes, they still give boat tours in the wet season, but only when the weather is not dangerous.
The tour finishes with lunch at a local restaurant, cafeteria style. We booked through Jade Tours. Highly recommend.
No comments:
Post a Comment