Into True Jungle Day 1-3

After 9 hours, 12 river crossings, and several thousand potholes, we made it to Carate beach on the Osa Peninsula. We spent some time camping there and getting ready for our entrance into the park, which requires permits. This area of the Penninsula is full of life since it borders the Corcovado National Parks jungle and marine edges. Scarlet Macaws and monkeys are found everywhere, and one begins to feel the energy emitted by the vast amounts of life hidden in the surrounding jungle.


We finally made it off the beach and into the water with our laden sea kayaks. The few miles distance to the park ranger station was covered slowly since a headwind and coastal currents were against us, but we arrived in good spirits and ready to continue on. Unfortuantly the rangers had never dealt with sea kayaks though, and debated through the night whether to let us into the park by sea kayak. Dangerous rocks, sharks, and the excuse of, "this is just a strange thing to do" we all used to disuade us from entering by kayak. In the end the Rangers decided to not let us into the park with the kayaks and so we obliged and entered ill prepared on foot. The 16km to our destination of Rio Sirena took about 5hrs on foot to cover.

The coastline near Rio Sirena is quite amazing. Wild, desolate, and beautiful are all worthy adjectives to describe it. It is an area where one almost expects to see Bull sharks and crocodiles coexisting, as if it was a normal event. In Sirena, it is actually. We spent several hight tides wading into the water and trying to document these animals as they went about their normal activities. The Bull sharks enter the river mouth to feed on smaller fish which live abundantly in the river, and the crocs lounge about and wait for oportune moments to feed upon unsuspecting prey. It is about as "wild" an event as can be found anywhere. One disapointment for us though was that the amount of sharks seen was relatively few. Stories told us of swarms of sharks fighting to gain entrance. Although we expected these to be exagerated, what we saw was very disapointing. The bull sharks seem to be succuming to the same fate here as in other places, a slow killing off.