(La Fortuna, Costa Rica)

If you haven’t read Part 1 yet – it will provide some excellent background for this post and the similar but not identical photo at the top of it.

It didn’t take long to see another caiman as we continued our cruise down the river.  This one was a little bolder and didn’t disappear under the water as we approached.  We saw many more caimans from a distance but this one let us get very close.

The next sighting was something I had not expected:  the “Jesus Christ Lizard”.   I was skeptical about the name but, once again, a little research proved that our guide was correct.  Also known as the “basilisk”, the Jesus Christ Lizard gets its dramatic name because of its ability to “walk” on water.  When this lizard runs over water, it creates a bubble and somehow manages to avoid sinking…at least for a little while.  Because they are lighter, young lizards can run up to 20 metres across the water before they sink.

There were large birds all over the place.  I saw lots of great egrets… but they are slightly lower on the “wow” scale as these ones may well have come from Canada!  However, the anhinga was a little more interesting:  it often stands with wings stretched for a long period of time.  Although it looks like it is about to take off, it is really just drying its wings.

While the albino howler monkey was silent, the same cannot be said for the other howler monkeys we encountered on the safari.  Due to a mutation in one of its throat bones, the howler monkey can “howl”25 times louder than you would expect.  It is the world’s second loudest mammal, after the blue whale.  The monkeys howl to scare off predators – if you hear what sounds like an abnormally large and loud dog that is barking at half speed, you are probably being told off by a howler monkey.

While the first picture looks like it was taken at close range, my zoom lens was actually performing heroic feats.  The second picture is a little grainier but I’ve included it because it shows two frolicking young monkeys along with an adult.

After the relatively frantic activity of the howler monkeys, it was time to slow down a bit.  We found a tree with sleeping bats:  they sleep in a straight-line formation so that they will look like a snake to potential predators.  The one at the top is the “alpha bat”!

Almost as idle as a sleeping bat is a three-toed sloth – we saw one at the very end of the safari.  Not only are they slow and lazy, but they are quite filthy too.  I was very lucky to be able to capture this one on film – it was up very high in a tree but our eagle-eyed guide was able to see it from the river far below.

This wildlife safari was thrilling.  It was great to see wild animals in their natural environment – definitely not as “convenient” as a zoo, but much more rewarding and enjoyable for all concerned.

This marks the end of my visit to the Arenal/La Fortuna area.  From here, we will be travelling west to the Monteverde Cloud Forest.

(La Fortuna, Costa Rica)

Now *this* is why I came to Costa Rica!

After a breakfast featuring (you guessed it) rice and beans, I was picked up at my hotel to travel by van to the Caño Negro region in the far north of Costa Rica.   Our destination was only a few kilometres from the Nicaraguan border and, just in case, we were advised to take our passports with us.

It didn’t take long for the wildlife theme to appear.  When we stopped for provisions just outside of La Fortuna, we saw hundreds of green iguanas.  These are harmless creatures but they are also surprisingly large.  Like every picture you’ll see in the next two posts, all of these animals are living wild in their natural environment.

As we neared Los Chiles and the Nicaraguan border, we veered off the main highway and onto the bumpiest (so far) road I have ever travelled.  It was well worth it, though, as we saw a small sampling of Costa Rica’s incredibly diverse wildlife from the van:  a stork with a 10-foot wingspan, a baby caiman (similar to a crocodile) and a type of heron that actually keeps the predator population under control by feeding on baby crocodiles and caimans.

The real show, however, started when we boarded the boat and set sail down the Río Frío.  It took less than one minute to see the albino howler monkey shown at the top of this post.  These monkeys are usually black but a genetic mutation changed this one to orange.  There are only a handful of albino monkeys in Costa Rica but there are two (having the same parents) on this very river.

Making it even rarer was the fact that this was a hermaphrodite albino monkey!  Our guide thought that there might be one other such howler monkey in the world.  This particular creature is probably doomed to a short life, as its vibrant colour makes it susceptible to birds of prey and its hermaphrodite status means that it is perceived as a threat (and thus attacked) by both male and female howler monkeys.  Maybe that’s why it was exiled to a sparsely vegetated tree.

The baby caiman that we saw on the way to the Río Frío was cute:  maybe two feet long and having a playful grin on its face.  Seeing an adult caiman is another matter altogether:  they still have the grin, but it is more like the evil grin of The Joker (from Batman).

The adult caiman grows to “only” 7 or 8 feet in length.  While they are definitely predatory, they are “small” enough that they apparently do not present a serious threat to humans.   None of us in the tour group were willing to put our guide’s claims to the test, however.

Even though I have only been here for a couple of days, I can already say that Costa Rica is a birdwatcher’s paradise: there are more species here than in Canada and the U.S.A. combined.  While I didn’t catch the names of very many of the birds we saw, I was nonetheless impressed by the size and variety of them along the Río Frío.

Not surprisingly, it’s going to take at least one more blog post to properly document my Caño Negro experience.  Stay tuned to find out if anything came close to the fantastic albino howler monkey sighting!