South East Travel

Costa Rica
January 2007

Report & Photos By
S. Bestvater & L. Lavack


Palo Verde River Tour The tour down the Palo Verde River was an opportunity for us to see a wide array of wildlife. It was about a 1 hour drive to the place where we entered the river. We booked with Vargas Tours which specializes in small personalized groups. Our guide Carlos, was fantastic. I highly recommend Vargas Tours. The tour was an all day tour, with the morning set aside for the river ride, lunch at a small village restaurant, and then stopping at Coco Beach in the afternoon for some shopping and beach time. We were picked up promptly from our resort, and were transferred to the next van where the others on our tour were waiting for us. Being a small tour group, we all fit into the 9 passenger van and were able to get to know each other a little. Carlos was a wealth of information and offered us information as we travelled to the river. Our boat had only 7 of us on board which gave us lots of room to move around for photos and viewing. The tour was not a scheduled tour, and when we happened upon anything of interest, we were able to spend as much time as necessary for everyone to see.

There were many different species of birds. Carlos previously worked for the parks department, and was very familiar with the various species. For most of my photographs on the river, I used a Canon 70-300 mm lens with image stabilization.
Rarely seen bird of the Parrot family. Our guide had not seen this species in over a year.

Although it took awhile, we eventually saw quite a few crocodiles. From big to small, my advice is to stay out of the river. Hidden on the banks, the crocs are able to cameflouge themselves extremely well.	The Iguanas were plentiful with an array of sizes and colors. We even saw the "Jesus Lizard". It zips across the water making it appear to be walking on water.

	Howler Monkey with baby. Monkeys, and more monkeys! We saw Howlers and Whiteface Monkeys while on the river.


	This line up of bats was interesting...as we approached slowly, they suddenly all flew off in a group to a tree just on the other side of us, and again, lined up on the underside of the trunk.

The housing was primitive in the small towns that we drove through, although it appeared that most of the people in the area of Costa Rica we visited were reasonably well off. We stopped in Coco Beach on the way home to shop. The shopping is much different than what we were used to in Mexico. There were only a few shops, and no pressure...	Our lunch stop was a small open-air restaurant on a dirt road in a very small village. The meal was one of the best that we had the entire week. Well worth the stop! The sand at Coco Beach was white as opposed to the black sand at our resort. The White sand comes from coral reefs while the black sand comes from lava rock.

Our final stop was at a grocery store to pick up coffee beans. The prices in the store were well below that of the resort, for the same product. I recommend the Café Britt brand coffee. It is sure smooth! This was the brand that was served at our resort. This is one of the best tours for seeing wildlife and birds. You are able to take a lot of photos, and it is only a short drive from the resort area.

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