The next morning I woke up to find that brown pelicans nested in the trees in the hostel that sat closest to the sea. They took off, back towards the main village in Montezuma. I planned to go to Cabo Blanco Absolute Nature Reserve, which was in the other direction, but I felt I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to film given the pickings were there for the taking. So I decided I’d take my camera equipment down to one of the empty beaches I’s seen on the walk to the hostel and I’d get my first shots of the trip. I was a little overwhelmed by the fact my expectations of how easy it would be to find wildlife were already well exceeded. I was alone on a deserted beach, surrounded by a beautiful landscape with no more than a few seconds going by before some kind of animal came into sight. I was starting to feel quite confident about my chances of being able to get some good footage. The only thing that was letting me down at this point was my ability and lack of practice. I’d taken pictures and videos of animals before but this was the first time, in action, using all of the equipment I got for the trip. Every five minutes, a flock of pelicans flew past, occasionally swooping down and diving into the sea to catch something. However, I struggled to follow them smoothly through the air. Any attempt to predict the direction they were going was also failing. I tried adjusting the stiffness of the fluid head and simply reducing the zoom to create a buffer zone for error, which did help, but still I wasn’t really happy with any of the footage despite persisting for an hour or so. It was clearly going to be more difficult than my initial optimism had predicted but I knew, with practice and perseverance, it could only get better.
If I was going to make it to Cabo Blanco in good time, I needed to leave pretty sharpish. I bought some bread, cheese and salami for lunch in the park, grabbed my water filtering bottle and set off on the eight kilometres walk to the national park. Thinking of myself as quite a fast walker, I thought it would only take me about an hour or so to walk there. What I didn’t consider, which I was already coming to realise was probably going to become a theme of my whole time in Costa Rica, is that the heat just doesn’t allow you to walk at the pace you’d like. About 25 minutes into the walk, and certainly nowhere near halfway to Cabo Blanco, a local electrician on a motorbike asked me if i'd like a lift, to which I was much obliged. He took me on the bike for about 5 minutes where he had to turn off down a different road to go to a job. He dropped me off next to yet another deserted beach, this one even more spectacular than the last. As soon as we stopped the trees erupted into an enormous series of sinister roars and fruits started to fall at our feet. He dropped me off directly underneath a troop of howler monkeys. I was in absolute awe. To me, they are probably the most iconic species of monkey and one that I’ve always been fascinated by throughout my childhood. Within 24 hours of being in the country, I was stood about 5/10 metres underneath an entire troop, listening to them howl. The man who gave me a lift seemed surprised that I was so fascinated by them and why wouldn’t he be, he probably sees them everyday. I just couldn’t bring myself to leave, I was absolutely captivated. Everytime a motorbike or car went by they would erupt into a hellish choir. I tried my best to get some footage of one of the males howling but only managed to get one piece that was slightly out of focus. Some of the other footage was good but nothing that could match the sublime experience of being there. I also noticed a small part of the beach crawling with about a hundred hermit crabs. I tried to get some nice shots of them but I realise in hindsight, I was subconsciously trying to brush up on the skill of following the subject with the camera smoothly, so the images weren’t that spectacular either. Again, I must have been there for an hour or two and my chance of having a full day in the park was getting slimmer, so I pressed on. I had an hour of walking along the dirt track left to do. The last 20 minutes were almost unbearable. I was hot, dehydrated and contemplated going back each time I had to sit in any shade I could find to cool down. A sign for the nature reserve spurred me on until I finally arrived at the beginning of the forest, just 700 metres from the entrance.
Cabo Blanco
By the time I arrived at Cabo Blanco it was around 11am and the reserve would be closed in just over five hours. Cabo Blanco isn’t that large, there is one main trail, with some relatively steep climbs, to the beach that takes about two hours each way. I decided I’d try to make it to the beach but if I was to make it there, I’d only have about an hour on the beach before I’d have to return, before the gates closed. The trail was absolutely stunning and well maintained but by this time I was exhausted and still dehydrated despite drinking as much as I could at the tap by the entrance. I made it almost to the highest peak of the trail. Stopping at various points to closely inspect something I thought I might have seen. It had taken me most of the two hours to get to this point and I was starting to feel nauseous. I’d definitely bitten off more than I could chew. My body hadn’t yet adjusted to the heat or humidity and the walk to the park had already tested my body's capabilities. The thought of climbing any further and then having to climb back up from sea level was too much to handle, so I walked back leisurely, taking some footage as I returned.
It was clear that multiple troops of howler monkeys lived in the reserve, their howls echoed across the forest canopy and I occasionally stumbled beneath a few of them. I found a lot of pleasure in just sitting on one of the steps on the trail and taking in all of the sounds. This also helped with my nauseousness. I also came across a blue morpho butterfly, flying in circles around a river. It would settle for a few seconds then resume its course of seemingly random circular flight. The same issue I had with the pelican persisted here, except butterflies were much more unpredictable. Walking just a little further I saw what I believe to be a pale-billed woodpecker as it hopped up and down the trunk of a tree in search of its next meal. Finally, nearly back at the entrance at this point, I saw a pair of coatis. They didn’t seem to mind me watching them too much. They kept their noses to the ground, trying to sniff things out, turning over leaves and doing some minor digging their snout. But they were always communicating with each other with muffled calls coming from the throat. It was quite sweet to witness. Even when they were out of sight from the trail, I could still hear them in the distance.
I made it back to the entrance well before the 4pm closing time but the ranger informed me that the bus was not for another hour. She told me that there was a flat thirty minute trail I could explore in the meantime, so I did. There wasn’t a whole lot to see on this trail, the scenery didn’t quite compare to the main trail. I did, however, stumble across a train of ants that zigzagged back and forth across the trail and back into the forest several times. It must have been over 20 metres long. At one section some of the ants sacrificed themselves to make bridges between two logs. Then within a matter of minutes, the trails of ants that ran across the path disappeared and the ants were gone, marching off into the forest. By this time, it was time for me to leave and I was grateful to be able to get the bus home this time. In the evening I enjoyed a few beers with a Polish girl, named Ula, who’d also been in the reserve that day. While we sat on the bench underneath the tree, looking out to sea in the pitch black, we kept noticing a strange snapping noise. We couldn’t work out what it was. We thought it might have been an animal snapping small twigs as it walked across the rocks or little splashes from the waves. Whatever it was, it puzzled us. Ula was checking out the next morning since the hostel was full but we both planned to go to the waterfall in Montezuma, so we exchanged numbers and agreed we would probably see each other there.
I ate breakfast the next morning on the same bench we both sat on the night before. I noticed that the rocks underneath where the tree were stained white and grey. I realised the strange snapping, or rather splatting noise we had been hearing was actually caused by the nesting pelicans, defecating as they slept. I used maps that I’d downloaded on my phone to direct myself to the waterfall. I took me up the steepest road I’ve had to walk up, to date. Once at the top, I began the descent down to the waterfall, the path meandered back and forth down the valley. The waterfall was beautiful, but, I do feel once you have seen one waterfall, you have seen most of them. That being said, I stayed there for a couple hours, swam and did some rock jumping. I didn’t see Ula, however, as she must have gone earlier in the morning. I decided to head back to the hostel to relax in the rock pool as I was still exhausted from the day before. On the way back, just as I exited the trail to the waterfall. I saw a type of fern covering the grass in front of me that I recognised, Mimosa pudicaI, or the shy plant. When touched or shaken, the leaves of the plant fold inwardly to protect itself. Seeing them instantly brought back the memory of when I was about six and I grew ten of these plants from seeds. Once they had grown, I went round to the houses of my friends to give them one each. Seeing them again, I couldn’t help but touch them and watch them move like I used to do. That night I chatted to an american who, in a previous life as he put it, ran a textile company in Indonesia which was quite fascinating. But I went to bed early in preparation for leaving relatively early to go to Santa Marta the next morning.
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