We woke up at six to get ready to go at seven but left at eight, after coffee on the deck at Sirena, from whence I saw an agouti! It was love at first sight. But then my agouti ran away.
A basilisk sat frozen in this position for the better part of an hour.
Is it just me, or does it always seem to take a longer to get back from someplace than it did to get there? On my return journeys I keep thinking, “How on earth did I walk this far?”
Today’s trek began well enough, with my feet going all the right places in the right order, left-right-left-right, until we reached the first of two river crossings. We changed from boots into sandals and started picking our way across, trying to step in the small spaces between the slick rocks. The current was fast and strong but the water not even to our knees. No big deal.
Ha ha ha. I was almost across when one foot slid into a deep hole. The current trapped it there and my heavy pack threw off my balance. “She’s going down!” I announced cheerfully. Two teetering seconds later: splash!
The water felt great and all was well until I tried to get up. The current and the algae decided it would be much more fun if I stayed a while. My pack agreed. Still, with a strong hand up from Jill I was back on shore in seconds.
I don’t mind a nice little swim, but my cameras do. My brand new Canon SLR stomped its little heels and threw an Error 99, which probably means “You got me all soaked, you eedjit.” My other camera started whirring and then rolled on its back, legs in the air, and went silent. As I recall.
I knew it wouldn’t do any good to get whiney, even though a thousand dollars worth of dead camera is hard to take. Mostly I hoped that my photos weren’t ruined, but there was no way to check.
Luckily, on Jill’s advice I’d wrapped my pack’s contents in plastic bags. Wet sheets would have sucked.
As we started back down the trail, I kept reaching for my ex-cameras. New-agey people would suggest I see this minor misadventure as an opportunity. I would suggest that the new-agey people stick their”¦ oh, never mind.
But guess what we saw! A collared anteater! It was the coolest thing. I couldn’t take a picture, but Jill did.
I’m sorry to tell you, Oleg, that the anteater wasn’t silky. But I think you need to get over silky things and learn to embrace the world of the collared. This brand is wonderful, and I believe its heart is kind and good.
Anyway, once again the hike was challenging, but we took our time: to swim in a pool under the waterfall a few feet from where we’d seen the puma, to eat a coconut that Lewis chopped open with his Swiss Army knife, and to play with sleeping lizards and dead giant sea turtles. [pictures by Jill]
We also found squirrel monkeys, so now I’ve seen all four kinds of mono that live here. We arrived at La Leona around 4:30 and set up camp 100 feet from the beach.
“I’d really like to find you at least one poisonous snake,” Lewis told me. Sadly, tonight’s walk yielded none, though we were in coral snake terrain. I had a hard time not being able to take pictures, and I didn’t find a single creature. This beautiful stuff was located and documented by Jill and Lewis.
Unable to stand it any longer, I borrowed Jill’s camera to take this, even though she already had better shots of her own:
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