Golfo Dulce
Practically without even noticing, early this morning we sailed to our last stop in Costa Rica, the Bay of Golfo Dulce on the Southern most tip of the Pacific Coast. Golfo Dulce’s deep calm waters are surrounded by lush dense tropical rain forest. We set up to disembark very early on the beach.
Today we visited a botanical garden called Casa Orquideas“the orchid house” on this remote part of Costa Rica.
Casa Orquideas is a private garden that has been tenderly been attended to for thirty years by a couple of American ex-patriots, Ron and Trudy Mc Allister. It was a great and leisurely walk on Casa Orquideas, this morning. Lots of colorful flowers and birds, and above our heads we were entertained by the continuous, playful and acrobatic flight of raucous vibrantly colored scarlet macaws, indeed a bird that deserves a lot of adjectives! Among other birds were chestnut-mandibled toucans, slaty-tailed trogons and road-side hawks.
As the day warmed up we returned to the National Geographic Sea Lion for a nice refreshing swim in the ocean from the stern.
After relocating the ship to Golfito during lunch, we went Zodiac cruising and kayaking to scan the nearby forest for wildlife. Many monkeys were spotted from the Zodiacs. We got great pictures of mantled howler monkeys and white faced capuchin monkeys, among green kingfishers, great blue herons, yellow crowned night herons and others.
We left Costa Rica behind today, but new adventures await us tomorrow morning in Panama!
