Corcovado National Park

So the Christmas festivities are over, but before we got back to work we had one more little adventure... a trip to Corcovado National Park. The beginning of the Corcovado journey starts in Carate, which is about and hour and a half on the collectivo from camp. From Carate, it's just over an 18km hike to Sirena Biological Station, a base for visitors to the park. We walked down the beach to La Leona, the official entrance to the park, where visitors must sign in. From there we walked through forest, mostly similar to what we have in Piro, keeping our eyes peeled for wildlife. We saw a coati poking it's head out from a V in a tree and later we saw a whole group of about 17 coatis, foraging in the ground and not really taking any notice of us. I've seen coatis before, but none that allowed us to get so close!

There were a few more sections of walking in and out of forest then on to the beach. As we neared Sirena, we worried that we hadn't seen anyone else in a while, then reached a sign that said 'Rio Claro river crossing'. This would have seemed fairly reasonable, had it not been the widest river I've ever seen. We couldn't believe that it would be shallow all the way across, but once we got over our fear of sharks and crocodiles we found we could cross most of the way with the water below our thighs. After this it was only a couple more kilometers to Sirena, which we reached relieved and exhausted.

The next morning we headed to the beach early, following a tip that this was the time to see tapirs. Unfortunately, lots of other people had the same idea and the tapirs snuck by unnoticed. We did however, see bull sharks at the river mouth. Mostly, we only saw their ominous fins gliding through the water but one came a little too close to shore, so we saw him writhe back in to the water. We spent our day walking the trails around Sirena station. The scenery was beautiful and we found plenty of cat tracks, but we did get a little disheartened at not having seen anything we don't see at camp, especially as there was a known puma prowling the area. In the evening we went back to the beach, and stationed ourselves close to what we were told is the entrance to the tapirs' sleeping place. We gave up and decided to watch the sunset, then heard a cry of 'guys!' from Kate, who had wandered around the corner. We ran to her and saw a tapir crossing the stream, to join another who was bathing in the water! They we only about 20m away and so huge, beautiful and graceful.

The next day we left Sirena early to walk back out of the park. We thought leaving earlier would give us a better chance of spotting wildlife, as well as getting to the beach before high tide and avoiding the heat of the day. On the way back we spotted some pretty birds, including a very tame hummingbird with two long white feathers flowing from its tail. Although we reached the first beach 2 hours before high tide, we still had to scramble over rocks, rather than walking on the flat sand and stones. Unfortunately, we were still on a beach at half an hour to high tide, which resulted in some members of the group getting particularly soaked by a large wave! We got back to Carate nice and early, where we had a well deserved cold drink and a lot of time to relax before catching the collectivo.