Tirimbina, Costa Rica –
The room was Spartan.
I’m talking monastery Spartan.
It had a couple of twin beds, and the type of metal shelving that you normally find in a restaurant pantry.
Plus a small, student-sized desk.
That was it.
And it did have an air conditioner, above the back door, with a remote control.
And instructions to turn it off whenever we left the room.
I felt lucky that we had a bathroom, in the room, and not some outhouse that we would need to find in the dark.
And the bathroom did have a shower.
Oooo, talk about luxury!
Then again, the accommodations weren’t why we were here.
We were here for the rainforest.
And we would have to wait until morning to see whether it was worth it.
After all, it was already dark by the time we had arrived.
And the rain was pouring.
We knew it was the rainy season, but our week in Guanacaste hadn’t prepared us for this.
It had been raining for the last couple of hours of our drive.
And it would continue pouring outside.
Most of the night.
We didn’t know what we would be waking up to.
We had taken the scenic route from Liberia, along the north shore of Lake Arenal, to get here.
And most of the way here, we had been gawking out the car windows, saying to each other that we needed to come back when we could spend some time in the area, and not just passing through.
It was gorgeous.
But we had started out with a silly idea in our heads that we could drive to the Tirimbina Ecological Preserve in time to do some exploring before dark.
Maybe even get here in time to take the nighttime tour.
Nope, the scenery on our drive took care of that.
So, we checked in, tired and hungry.
Luckily for us, the dining hall still had some dinner available that we could eat.
So, once we dropped our stuff off in our room, we headed for the food.
Again, we weren’t here for the accommodations.
The dining hall didn’t have a menu to order from, they had one meal that they had prepared, served cafeteria style, and you either ate that meal, or ordered pizza to be delivered.
The food they served us was reasonably good, although it wasn’t something that we would have gone seeking out if we had been looking for a restaurant at which to eat.
Then again, this is an ecological preserve, what money they make off the food and accommodations probably goes back into the operations.
And by operations, I mean the people that work there.
While I’m sure they don’t get paid big bucks, they do have to get paid something.
So, our hunger quelled, we headed back to our room for the night.
And to hope that the rain would end before morning.
Luckily, the rain did end sometime in the early morning hours, not too long before sunrise.
So we were up early, not just so we could get some breakfast, but also so we could do some exploring on our own.
Because we were staying at the preserve, we were free to wander most of the trails on our own, while it was daylight.
And Dore wanted to cross both suspension bridges.
And that was where we saw the most non-insect wildlife (not counting lizards) that we encountered.
There was no choice but to cross the first suspension bridge. You had to cross it to get to any of the trails.
And it crossed the Rio Sarapiqui, the river that separated the preserve trails from the entrance.
It was billed as the longest suspension bridge in Costa Rica.
And about halfway across, there was a spiral stairway down to an island in the river where there were a few trails to explore.
And it was just past the stairway that I saw what didn’t look like bark on a tree beside the bridge.
It looked more like snakeskin.
Just one curl, poking through a gap in the tree.
And on the other side, was the rest of the snake.
Just hanging out, blending in.
Dore had missed it, had walked right by it.
Lucky for her it was far enough away from the bridge that it couldn’t easily have bitten her.
Not being a herpetologist, neither of us knew whether it was venomous or not.
And we saw no reason to find out.
After all, it wasn’t bothering us, why should we bother it?
Other than to annoy it by taking its picture…
Later, while talking to someone who had been exploring the trails on this island, he told me that he had seen a red snake crossing the path in front of him.
I think he had the closer call, but ours was the harder to spot.
While walking the trails on the other side of the river, we came upon some large mounds that we determined must be ant mounds.
Sure enough, moments later we found the line of ants carrying leaves that they had cut back to their mound.
This was just the first mound of these ants that we would find on the trails.
About midway across the second suspension bridge, we spotted a sloth hanging in the tree beside us.
Facing away, so he could ignore us.
But he couldn’t ignore the large bee that kept trying to land on his face.
I’ve always thought of sloths as very slow-moving creatures.
That bee proved me wrong.
They can move fast when they want to.
According to one of the guides, sloths move very fast when they are attacking.
Something I didn’t know they are prone to do.
Guess I won’t be provoking any sloths any time soon…
The other wildlife that we managed to see were several lizards. Of the ones that we saw, no two were alike.
I can’t imagine how many we didn’t see, considering how well they tend to blend in with their surroundings.
As much as we did see, there was a lot more that we didn’t see, but could hear.
The sound of the rain forest made it clear that there was life everywhere around us.
I just wish we had had more time to explore it.
I guess that means that our Spartan accommodations were worth it…
For more photos of Tirimbina, click here.
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