Jungle trekking and...

Part of the allure for me to go to the Pacific coast was the possibility of seeing “dart frogs” - the brightly colored amphibians that indigenous people have used for poison for their arrows (from the toxin secreted by their skin). However to find them, you have to trek in a hot, humid jungle for several km. We also had to wear rubber boots because of all the mud we’d be walking through.

our guide, Pedro, with his machete slung over his shoulder

This jungle trek was the first of three activities that we had booked at the lodge, and it really tested us physically. We hiked up and down quite a few hills and climbed “steps” carved into the muddy hillside for an hour and a half.

Pedro only spoke Spanish, and our knowledge of Spanish is pretty much limited to reading menus. Thus, we unfortunately didn’t learn the names of any of the plants and animals we saw, nor any interesting tidbits about them, as I was hoping.

However, before we started on our trek, I used Google Translate to tell him I was really interested in seeing dart frogs. He gave me a thumbs up, and he delivered:

That little guy is only 1-2 inches long - thank goodness for zoom lenses! We saw several others with the same colors, but I didn’t get any better pictures than that one.

Our hike ended at this “centenarian” tree…

… but I only learned the fact of its age by consulting the lodge website to investigate our activities. At this point in the jungle, Pedro made motions to say that we were turning around and going back the way we came - hiking back an hour and a half, and continuing to sweat profusely. The lodge only had cold water showers, but boy, they felt good that day!

The next day poured rain from 0300 - 1200, so our scheduled excursion was cancelled. We decided to wander some of the shorter trails on our own and found this guy right along the trail to our cabin:

I noticed him because his bright turquoise tail caught my eye as he scurried in the leaf litter.

This was the trail to our cabin:

It took me 2 days to realize the large wood things I kept having to step over were the roots of the tree!

We also walked down to the beach we arrived on…

… and found it was alive! (as usual, open this post in your browser to see the video)

All these hermit crabs scurrying around just made me giggle. Here’s what they look like, up close -

Our last full day’s activity was another jungle hike, but it was to end at a river. We were then to ride in a canoe down to the ocean. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any more dart frogs, and the skies opened up on us about halfway through the hour-plus hike. We looked and felt like drowned rats, and I tried to keep my camera covered (we were stupid and forgot to bring a dry bag for it). Thus, some of the following pictures may look a bit hazy in the center because the lens fogged for a time, but ultimately dried out.

Our trusty conveyance -

Once we were sitting in the canoe, the water came up to within an inch of the side edge. As we passed through some small “rapids”, the balancing of the boatman with his pole caused my butt and pants to get another soaking.

This was a neat bend in the river -

Yep, we were in some pretty dense jungle.

We came out of the mangroves to end in the local village -

After taking another welcome cold shower back at our cabin, and quickly eating a late lunch, we hopped in a boat for a ride down the coast…

… where it became more mountainous…

… and ended with some cool offshore pinnacles -

A young German couple who were staying at the lodge for surfing, joined us in the boat, and we dropped them off at an area where the waves were breaking decently…

… while we motored on down to the point to check out the interesting erosion patterns -

We went snorkeling here, and the water was really nice and warm, but there was almost nothing to see but big rocks covered in algae.

I don’t have any great image to close this blog with, but I liked this one showing the waves crashing, which is what we heard from our cabin, both night and day: