Canopy Life: Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

Puerto Viejo de Talamanca (PVT) sits on the extreme southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, just above Panama. Puerto Viejo= Old Port, and the Talamancas are the mountains that start in the south of Costa Rica and run down through western Panama. The town itself is small, bordered on the north by Cahuita and on the south by Manzanillo, though most people consider this whole area to be PVT.

     There's an interesting atmospheric paradox that occurs here. It's a very laid back, Afro-Carib surfing town with a lot of pot floating around...yet at the same time there always seems to be a wild party brewing at one of the local bars or right on the beach itself. I guess I can see how the two fit together :-) Anyways the seafood is great, the vibe is right on, and depending on the direction you're facing there's black sand beaches to your left and rainforest to your right. What's not to like?

     Thats enough about the town itself though. This weekend was amazing; it was an adventure from the beginning. We set off on Friday morning to catch the first direct bus (4.5 hours) from San Jose at 6:00am. This meant we woke up at 5:00am...Yeah, in the morning... At 5:40am it was now our turn at the ticket window. Sold out. Next bus didn't leave San Jose until 10:00am! There was no way we were going to wait around San Jose central, already checked out of our hostel, for four more hours, only to then have another four and a half hour bus ride! I didn't wake up that early for nothing. So after talking it over we decided to take the next bus to Limon (not a nice place) and hope that there was a bus going from there to PVT. So long story short, we made it to PVT a little before 11:00am, which wasn't too bad at all.

    One thing worth noting about the travelling- Upon leaving Limon I looked out the window and soaring high above, there it was... a FRIGATE BIRD!!!!! (that's for you Faye)

The hotel that I booked happened to lose, cancel, forget to make our reservation, whatever the case we had to go somewhere else. We ended up just around the corner at a place called Jacaranda Hotel, named after a tree that flushes with small brilliant purple flowers, that was no where to be seen on the property. The place was pretty enough and had some nice landscaping that provided cute little shelters with benches and small tables placed throughout the grounds. There also was a small amount of animal life meandering around- rufous-tailed hummingbirds, social flycatchers and great kiskadees, and a healthy supply of Bananaquits right outside the window (they happen to be one of my favorite birds). There was also an odd abundance of Puerto Rican Crested Anoles (Ctenonotus cristatellus) These guys are huge!

As far as activities for the weekend went, we were bums. The first day we wandered around town a bit, got some lunch and a couple of drinks, went for a short hike up Cashew Hill on the west end of town, and then went out for dinner later in the evening. I had resolved to wake up sometime around 6:00am the next day in order to get some hiking and birding done, but when I awoke it was raining, so I promptly rolled back over and went back to sleep until 9:00ish. The rest of our second day was pretty slow going- rain, lunch, a little more rain, a nap... We did eventually leave the hotel grounds in search of food. We ended up at this very nice bistro on the beach with the most amazing ocean/mountain/sunset view. I am still regretting leaving my camera in the room. We had originally planned on just having a drink there and then moving on to somewhere different for dinner, but we liked it so much we stayed for a few appetizers and our share of Imperial and gin and tonics.

Stawberry Poison-dart Frog
(Oophaga pumilio)

The next morning, Sunday, our last, I managed to get out on the "trails" by 6:30am. I did some light birding which turned up a few familiar and welcomed faces (beaks?). I say light birding as I was also herping at the same time, which led to a lot of looking up and then back down at the leaf litter. I collected some photo subjects and put them in plastic bags to bring back to the hotel/studio. Rachel had asked me to bring back some Strawberry Poison-dart frogs, Oophaga pumilio, and I wanted to get some shots of the common, though stunning, male Yellow-headed Dwarf geckos (Gonatodes albogularis) that were found on many of the tree buttresses.

Yellow-headed Dwarf Gecko
(Gonatodes albogularus)

A quick note on the photo shoot- It was such a relief for both Rachel and I to finally get some photography in. We had both gotten new cameras and gear around the same time, and had not really had anything "interesting" to photograph. She had gotten a Nikon D3000 camera with the 18-55mm kit lense (her first DSLR!) and I had purchased the new Nikon D7000 with R1 macro flash kit. Most of you know what it feels like to have a bit of extra money burning a hole through your pocket- well, that's what it felt like to have all this new exciting gear and "nothing" to do with it! It was burning a hole through my dresser drawer for over a month! So finally we were able to spend an hour or so photographing some spectacular animals as well as playing around with our "new" equipment. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.
BTW, Rachel is great photographer! Way better than I was as a beginner (and probably even still now). It's like she has an amazing mentor or something....*clears throat*.... Senior Paine......

With the photo shoot behind us, we packed our bags and placed them in the hotel's storage room. With the bus to home not leaving for another four hours, we then decided to rent two bicycles and peddle our way down to Playa Cocles (a few km south) where we enjoyed an awesome beach lunch of tortillas, black bean spread, and an avocado, with a mango for dessert. I should of taken pictures of the mess we made :-)

A mojito and a beer while
waiting on the bus to arrive

     The bus back to San Jose, the last one of the day, was around 30 minutes late, which put it just shy of our 45min deadline till we say "screw it" and stay another night. Too bad it came within our timeframe.



     Animal highlights of the weekend: 30 something species of birds (low, I know), 8 species of herps (6 lizards and 2 frogs), a whole lot of Nephila spiders, one CRAZY looking Argiope spider, some of the cutest street dogs to be found (including a Husky), Howler monkeys, and six sloths (two of which were spotted from the bus)!

Smokey Jungle Frog- Largest frog in Costa Rica
(Leptodactylus savagei)

The food, the drinks, the animals, the atmosphere, and most importantly- the company for the weekend were the definition of perfect. I lamented being back in San Jose that night, but I took comfort in knowing that in less than 24 hours I would be in the Cloud Forests of Monteverde...where I'm writing this from now.