Waking up the next day, for the first time deep in a jungle like this, was an amazing feeling, if not a bit of a sensory overload. Still half asleep, the sound of the river the small waterfall on the other side of it I was convinced that it was raining. I lay in bed a little longer, mentally preparing myself for a glum, rainy day in the jungle, trying to work out what I’d actually be able to get out and do. But when I looked out of the window, which was actually just mosquito netting, the skies were clear, shattering my expectations. I went from melancholy and sluggish to chirpy in the flick of a switch. The station, during daylight, felt poles apart compared to the night before. There was no chaos of sound and rain. The light lit up the wall of trees all around us, the beautiful garden and the baby blue river. The station consists of one main building, a mostly open plan, two story timber lodge and the 4 surrounding detached lodges for guests. Beyond the lodges lies a six or seven acre garden that is both wild and maintained. On the border of the garden, a big sheltered decking on stilts over looked the river which surrounded the two thirds of the station like a moat, over which the dense jungle on the other side hangs.
Together, Aster and I made rice and beans with tomato and coriander from the garden for breakfast as this was all we had. We raked the garden for an hour or so after breakfast. It was physically pretty punishing work. If we were back in a temperate climate then it probably wouldn’t have been so tough. But in reality, it was a small price to pay for living in my idea of paradise for a few weeks. Feeling like we’d done enough for the day, we then explored the trail that takes you around the 150 acres of jungle owned by Rebeca. The trail starts with a steep incline up the orange clay through the forest up to the lookout, a clearing at the top of the hill with views to Drake Bay. The trail then snakes through the valley down to the waterfall for about 45 minutes where you have to cross the river twice before the trail follows the river back to the station. On the way we saw dozens of tiny brown frogs no bigger than the nail of my little finger, neither Aster or I could identify what species they were. About halfway to the waterfall, we noticed a troop of Geoffroy's spider monkeys above us. One of them, a mother with a baby, responded to us with considerable aggression. The first warning sign was a series of vocalisations and screeches. Then, without taking her eyes off us for a moment, she swung to a branch directly above us, launched her whole body towards us letting go of the branches with her hands, holding on only with her tail and positioning her body down at us with her feet. For quite a small animal in comparison to us, it was an intimidating gesture. It was a reaction of such hostility I’d not witnessed in any other monkeys in Costa Rica. It was telling, to me, of the remoteness and the infrequency that these human-monkey interactions must occur in comparison to other areas of Costa Rica. Not wanting to agitate them anymore, we moved on quite swiftly only to walk past the other half of the group round the corner who also gave very clear vocal warnings to us and each other.
With no man-made infrastructure along the trail, the roots of the tree acted as steps down the clay slope of the valley treacherously covered in slippery wet leaves. About half way down these ‘stairs’ the sound of crashing water funnelled by the valley sounds so close it feels as if you should be standing in it. The waterfall itself, completely surrounded by dense jungle is a wonderfully relaxing place. The short, fast flowing waterfall, no taller than ten feet high pours into a deep blue pool. To the left of the waterfall there’s a shallow cave. I climbed up onto the rocks in front of to see what was inside. As I peered my head in the cave erupted into squeaks, clearly, the bats that had made it their home, like the spider monkeys, didn’t want me anywhere near them either, so I left them to it. We swam in the pool for about 30 minutes before following the river downstream, crossing it twice, back to the station. We relaxed for the rest of the day, chatting about our home countries before making dinner - rice and beans, again - and got an early night.
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