Sunday, July 8, 2012

Costa Rica Stand Up Paddle: Just got home and am finally able to post photos!

I just got home from my Costa Rica stand up paddle surf trip. I had a little trouble posting photos from my ipad so I had to wait to do that until I got back here in San Diego. Here are a few, I've put them in chronological order and will post more in the next few days:

Costa Rica is a jaw dropper- everywhere you look there's something beautiful going on. This is from the northern part of Costa Rica, the Guanacaste. The beach is called Playa del Coco- there are good waves nearby but it's a mission to get to them. If you're into flatwater paddling, though, you just walked into a paddling heaven.

I'm a science guy- so that means I'm into plants, birds, reptiles- you know, National Geographic type of stuff. These flowers caught my attention, don't they look like brittle stars? This was my fifth (sixth?) trip to Costa Rica and it's pretty much standard that you will see something new each time you visit. 


This was home for a week. I know, it was a jaw dropper of a place to stay. We have some extremely nice friends who are semi-residing in Costa Rica and they invited us to come down, surf and see the arribada. The arribada is the mass arrival of sea turtles to lay eggs on the local beach. We missed the big invasion (it mostly happens during the wet months of September and October) but we did get out at night to see a mini-arribada. I watched a turtle land on the beach, crawl up the berm, dig out a hole and lay her eggs. That was something I'd always wanted to see and it answered a question I had about the egg laying process I'd had since I was a boy. Basically, how does a turtle dig such a symetrical, deep hole? Answer: The back flippers are basically flexible and have the bone structure of your hand, the momma turtle reaches down, scoops out sand and flings it off to the side. Amazing stuff.
Turtle tracks up the beach. I was excited to see this one track... little did I know what was waiting for me around the bend... (see next pic).
See all the tracks? There were hundreds of them up the beach! This was a small arribada, we were told that during the major events, there are so many turtles that you can't even walk on the beach without stepping on them. I also got a chance to touch a turtle egg. The eggs look like a slightly crushed ping pong ball and they are much tougher and flexible than chicken eggs.
This was our commute down to the beach, it's a real jungle walk. While we were there we saw: a howler monkey, an armadillo, a coati (google it), olive ridley turtles, iguana and a billion voracious mosquitos.
More photos to come!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pura vida!