The Osa Peninsula was the one place that lived up most to my expectations of what Costa Rica would be like most. It's a very remote, largely unspoilt area of Costa Rica and absolutely full of wildlife. The type of place that’s becoming increasingly hard to find in the world. To get to my final destination of Tamandua Biological Station, where I’d be volunteering for the next three weeks, I had to take a bus at 6:30 am from San Jose. The bus arrived three or four hours later in Palmar Norte, a small connecting town made up of a main street, a few garages, cafes and market shops. From Palmar Norte, I took a taxi into the nearby wetland area to a village called Sierpe. Here, I had to take a taxi boat to Drake Bay and finally a 4x4 deep into the jungle where the station is based.
Sierpe itself is a very small place. It has a couple of small shops typical to rural Costa Rica selling everything from mobile top-ups and duct tape, to carrots and tinned meat. Here I bought a local sim card as I was told by Rebeca, the owner of Tamandua, there was no wifi at Tamandua. The most notable place in sierpe is the dock where tourists and locals alike take the boat taxi to Drake Bay on the Osa Peninsula. Since the boat only leaves twice a day, once at 11am and once 3pm, I’d arrived with about three hours to spare. So, I sat down and had some lunch at the large open cafe-bar. As I ate, I watched a pair of scarlet macaws noisily pick fruits from a tree. Every few minutes, a new pair flew over the river in front of me. I started chatting to one of the men working at the bar. I was quite taken aback when he started talking in a thick Irish accent. He told me that he’d been back to Ireland for nearly seven years and that he couldn’t face going home to his family that he left after having a mental break-down. I felt quite sorry for him, he said he wasn’t getting paid a lot either. But he seemed, on the on the face of it anyway, in good spirits. He took me to the edge of the dock where he casually pointed out a 9-foot caiman on the river bank, basking in the sun. Not long before the boat was due to leave, the clear blue skies turned into rain and we were all given bin bags to put our belongings in. But, either because of the rain or simply the laid back lifestyle, the boat didn’t leave for another two hours.
When the time was ready, we handed over our shiny black luggage to the captain like a human conveyor belt, who placed them in the storage in the bow of either of the two boats. The first boat took the locals, the second everyone else. Almost as soon as we took off the rain began to clear making for what was the most beautiful boat trip I have ever taken. The forested hills and mountains, draped in mist gradually turned into mangroves. We weaved from side-to-side, avoiding drift wood and following the natural course of the river. Then, after roughly 45 minutes, I noticed we weren't following the meander of the the river but were heading straight for the mangroves at full speed. I looked back to check the captain's expression, or even if he was still conscious but he was totally calm. As we got closer and closer people started to look at each other for reassurance. A tiny black opening started to appear out of the mangrove. Slowing only five metres before the entrance we were gently engulfed by the darkness of the mangrove canopy. The dark, eery channel, not much wider than the boat, zigzagged through the tangled roots which towered over us. We creeped through the mangroves for maybe 5 minutes, all of us, apart from the captain, in awe. It was an experience like nothing I’ve ever done before. I couldn’t believe my camera was wrapped up in a bin bag in storage and it hadn’t even rained on the journey.
Once the channel merged back with another of the main rivers, it wasn’t long until we were on the open ocean and the sun was already setting. Away from the safety of the river mouth, the water became very choppy, sending the bow of the boat high into the air and crashing back down heavily into the next wave. When we arrived, it was dark. The boat that had taken the locals which had all of my belongings on, had broken down about fifty metres from the shore. So I had to wait until the people were transported off by another boat and then for the luggage to be taken off. Since Rebeca was on holiday for the next week, she had arranged for a 4x4 to pick me up from the boat. I was told to look for a young, fat man called Danys with a white car and he would take me to Tamandua. While I waited, I asked the nearest man who might possibly fit that description if his name was Danys, and luckily I was right on the first try. He didn’t speak any English, nor did I speak enough Spanish to converse properly, so I gestured that my bag was on the other boat. After getting the bottom half of my clothes wet wading into the water, we were ready to go.
Due to the obvious language barrier, ‘Numero uno’, as we approached the first of the six rivers we needed to cross, was the first of only a few words we exchanged on the thirty minute off-road journey. Somewhere along the way the rain had resumed again. We picked up a water container from Rebeca’s house to take to Tamandua. This is where I met Alan, the cook at tamandua for when guests arrive. He spoke a little more english than Danys. In a very soft and carefully chosen manner he informed me that he didn’t know where the keys are to the room that I’d be staying in so I’d have to get a hammer to break off the lock. We stopped again at Danys’ house this time in the jungle, to grab a torch. After several failed attempts to get over the bank of the forth river, Danys decided that we had to abandon both the car and the water and walk the rest. He reversed the car back out of the river. I grabbed my bag, took off my flip flops, deeming them to be useless in the fast flowing water and we set off on foot through the first of three rivers to cross. The mosquitoes, the rain, the rocky river crossings and wet clay steep uphill roads made this quite a stressful start to my time here. I wondered if it was always going to be this chaotic. But, it made it all the more relieving to finally arrive after more than thirteenth hours of travelling.
Danys took me to the tool shed to get a hammer and we joked about using the pick axe to open the door. Hammer in hand, ready to prize open the door of my room for the night, the other volunteer, Aster, a Danish biology student, came out to see what was going on. She seemed quite panicked. The fact I was holding a hammer probably didn’t help. Grateful of the fact that I was another volunteer and not a thief, Danys left and she showed me around the station. Just in the living area there were hand-sized spiders, a family of white-lined bats circling the lights and three huge tail-whip scorpions - odd looking things that don’t have the classic sting and pincers look most scorpions have, so look more like spiders. I couldn’t I couldn’t contain my excitement about staying somewhere with such close contact with wildlife. I turned back into my five-year-old self when I used to crawl around my garden watching insects to see what they would do for hours. Having freaked out Aster for the second time, I could tell she wanted to get on with showing me around so she could go back to bed. On a tour of the garden, we both spotted something fury rustling in the fallen leaves. To our luck it was a northern tamandua - a medium-sized species of anteater that has beige and black fur in the shape of a vest, small black eyes, shrek-like ears, a long snout and prehensile tail rather than the big bushy one their larger cousins have. It's definitely one of the stranger animals I’ve seen in my life. It just pottered through the garden sniffing things out as it wandered back into the jungle. We were both left stunned. I’d read before coming that the Osa Peninsula has been described as the most biologically intense place on the planet but I’d been there for no longer than thirty minutes and was already blown away. I became excited by the fact that maybe this was the normal thing to happen, for mammals to make their way through the garden each night common.
Aster found some keys in the kitchen to try to open one of the rooms with. After trying what seemed like the whole set of fifty tiny keys, I was in. The room had no light whatsoever. The alien-like noises from the frogs and insects were deafeningly loud. What must have been a coconut, plummeted to the ground and quite literally put me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out if something was coming closer. Though I’d determined it indeed probably wasn’t an animal, I went out to check if I’d be lucky enough to see something walking past. This turned out not to be a good idea. I switched on my head torch to see, hoping I would see a passing snake or even another tamandua. But looking out into the abyss somehow creates a connection with you and the thing your imagination tells you might be out there. Then there's the feeling that you are being watched, then the fear kicks in and the urge to run back inside to safety. It’s one of the only times I’ve actually felt aat all scared by the wilderness in Costa Rica. Safely behind the walls of the cabin from whatever was out there, I put on a podcast to drown out the noise of the forest and I slept surprisingly well that night.
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