In the early afternoon, after collecting the memory cards from the camera traps, Rebeca, Aster and I went through the footage. For each day, there was at least one animal sighting. The sheer amount of wildlife and its diversity was astonishing. At the top of the count list were the agoutis - small-dog-sized rodents and the big and little cousin to the capybaras and guinea pigs, respectively. Second, the great tinamou - anatomically very similar to ratites, like the ostrich or kiwi, but a species capable of flying. Though, it still very much prefers to walk. We also saw great curassow, coatis, tayras, armadillos, hog-nosed skunks, jaguarundis, ocelots, margay cats and the tapir that left the tracks that I’d found. In one particular video we counted over 40 individual white lipped peccaries. If you look closely in another, it's possible to see a peccary squirting its pungent liquid out of the scent gland on the top of its back as it brushes against a tree. The sad truth, Rebeca explained, is that the peccary's existence is now threatened within the region. They are still hunted by local people for their meat. According to Rebeca, they are likely to go extinct in the next 15 to 20 years if nothing is done to change the current situation. Osa Conservation continue to monitor the pigs, however, more still needs to be done.
We also came across footage of a puma walking along the track at about 9am just a few days before. While this was very good news and a good sign of the health of the area, since pumas don’t like to share territories with jaguars, it also meant that there were no jaguars in the area. This sight was therefore both a relief, since we would be spending most of our time here alone, and mildly disappointing that no chance of finding any trace of a jaguar. Rebeca told us that some claim they have seen jaguars but she didn’t believe them. Then, revealing a side of Rebeca I rarely saw, she lightheartedly went on to explain that when she was pregnant many locals asked her if she was scared. That they believed pumas and jaguars can smell an unborn child and would attack her to eat the baby. Even more so, that urinating in the forest would be the worst thing that she could do as they would have been able to smell her from further away. She joked that she might try it on the trail as it might help to get more camera trap sightings. Another myth she explained to us, which probably isn’t too far from the truth, was that the best way to attract a jaguar is to take a baby into the forest and make it cry. She found this all very amusing for a mother of two living in the jungle.
Those few hours were probably the most interesting of my entire trip so far. I gained a real sense of connection with the animals that, though I hadn’t seen in person, walked around us in the early hours of the morning and shared the same track that we walk. Rebeca’s breadth of knowledge about the forest shined out from within her. She became excited and animated telling us as much as she could about the animals. I am lucky to have learned anything from her at all. For some of the older footage I helped record the species and any obvious details like sex, age, date and time to aid the completion of long term monitoring of fauna in the area. For the next few days I watched all of the footage, meticulously checking each frame and deleting any of the videos which were set off by the wind or the rain. I also adjusted the exposure of any videos that were too dark for proper identification.
A few hours later, the guests arrived. All 14 of them including the guide. It felt quite strange having to share the station we had made our home for nearly 2 weeks. The place was no longer a blissfully calm paradise. What’s more, we had to give our cabins up for the guests. Rightfully so, given they were paying customers. Instead, we would be staying in the apartment Rebeca’s husband had built next to their house. Once they had settled in Rebeca drove home to take care of her children for a few hours. While Alan started the preparation for dinner, Aster and I gave the guests tours around the station. I took half the guests on a tour of the lower part of the trail for about half an hour pointing out flora and fauna, while Aster showed the other half round the garden before switching roles. The guests were quite interested in everything we had to say, however the issue with trying to spot wildlife with that many people is the noise as they talked or even just walked. Together, seven people half-whispering adds up to quite a considerable noise even to our relatively blunt ears. We still managed to spot most of the wildlife that I’d seen on the previous night walk, including the tarantulas and tailless whip scorpions, but our already slim chances of seeing anything substantial were completely wiped out. After the hour was up, we headed back to the station to help Alan with the cooking, by which time Rebeca was back.
Not long into cooking, the skies started to fall and within a minute, all of the guests came running in soaking wet and covered in mud. An hour in, the rain was still plummeting down, crashing on the tin roofs so loudly that we all had to shout to be heard. Since the rain can make the river swell and very difficult to cross even in a 4x4, we raced to finish cooking and ultimately eat. As we were frantically doing the dishes, Alan casually walked in, in his usual calm and understated manner and told us that we needed to leave right now or the river would be impossible to cross. So we grabbed all of our things, a few clothes for the night, my laptop and camera. I said “au revoir” to the guests at the dinner table to which they returned in unison and we ran to the jeep park on the river bank. The river’s edge, usually about 4 metres from where the car was parked, was already well past the first set of wheels. I had to clamber in through the other side, drenching myself further as I forced my way to the door between the plants and the car.
Though the beaten up jeep provided shelter, rain made the headlights pretty ineffective. We all equipped ourselves with torches to spot trees floating in the water that might hit us and then set off through the first river. One of the biggest issues, other than the water being too high and strong to drive through, was getting over the sandy river banks as the wheels can easily just sink into them. With luck, we made it through the first river that surrounds the station and the second river relatively easily despite the water coming half way up the doors at points. Between each river the jeep skidded from side to side over the clay hills like we were driving on ice. Rebeca herself was a little bit panicked and told us of times she’s been stuck before. It felt both extremely chaotic and surreal - it was a sense of urgency and chaos I’d never really felt before. Approaching the fifth river, we couldn’t see anything but the rain a meter in front of the bonnet as we descended down the steep clay track. Still at a 45 degree angle, as if out of nowhere, water started rushing over the bonnet from right to left as the front of the car dipped into the water. At this point all that we could see was the surface of the silty water as we looked down onto it. Rebeca kicked on the gas and we started to level out and we were shortly over the river. Rebeca, followed by Aster and I, released a sigh of relief as the last river was close to her house and we could walk the rest if it was impassable.
Five minutes of slipping and sliding later, we made it to the final river which was completely unrecognisable to the clear shallow river it normally is. Now a silky brown clay colour, it was flowing rapidly. Rebeca decided it was too deep for us to cross. I got out of the car to direct Rebeca as she reversed back to park on the side of the road where we would leave the car and she called Ananyas. Two minutes later he arrived. He chuckled ‘we are in the rainforest’. Now regretting bringing my laptop and camera in my bag, I wrapped it in the oversized rain-cover for my larger backpack. I carried it under my arm and we started to wade through the river. Ananyas held Aster’s arm as she rightfully wasn’t feeling confident about the crossing. The flow of the water was so strong. I had to start standing still to adjust to it first. It got deeper and deeper with each pigeon step. In the middle, where the flow was strongest, the water came up above my waist. From there I held my bag in front of me at my chest. Luckily, that was the worst of it. Where the submerged road normally began, the water slowed down considerably and we could calmly walk to safety. Still raining, we walked for two minutes up to Rebeca’s. We hung up our clothes to dry and went to bed drained of adrenaline. We found out in the morning that Ananyas spent most of the night fixing damage to the engine that one of the earlier crossings had caused.
Sounds terrifying!