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Tamarindo Estuary

2009 Southern Skies Fiesta & Tamarindo Coast

March 3, 2009 – Tuesday – Tamarindo Estuary, Costa Rica (day 3)

My friends and I are up at 6am in order to be picked up at 7am for a taxi ride to the Hotel Bula Bula, the starting point for our two hour motorboat trip up the estuary. Since we’re up so early, we have time to quickly go down the beach in search of turtle tracks. We find no new tracks but some turtle egg remnants are around a former nest, and there is a Frigate bird soaring over the beach. We return in time to take the taxi to our launch point for the boat trip. We have time for a very nice breakfast in The Great Waltini’s restaurant (now closed), where they have a tame parrot who entertains everyone with his antics.

Crocodile in the water

After breakfast we board the little 8-seater boat and wind our way through the narrow channels of Estero Tamarindo, a national wildlife refuge. Since we depart at 8am, the temperature is pleasantly cool. We see lots of birds, a group of Howler monkeys, and a couple of crocodiles. We return to our launch point by 10am and our taxi is waiting to take us back to the hotel. Cost of the boat trip is US$25 each, plus US$10 each way for the taxi – breakfast extra of course.

My friends join me on my balcony and bring some cold coffee to sip while we watch the action at the pool. After they leave, I take my iPhone and earphones down to a hammock and spend an hour listening to music before wandering up to the restaurant for lunch – a beer and a quesadilla. What a life! We meet Wilson, the owner of the hotel, who is a real character with lots of stories to tell.

I return to my room to download the latest photos from my cameras to have a look at the results from today’s excursion to the estuary, and I also check my email from home. I am really enjoying having my notebook computer with me while I travel. It gives me something familiar to do, helps me to stay in touch with home, and I can process the travel photos I’ve taken. Of course, on this particular trip I’ve also used it to process my astrophotos, so I can see if I’ve had some success the previous night.

I do some laundry in the bathroom and hang them over the rail to dry in the hot afternoon sun and strong winds – they are dry in an hour! After tramping around in the muck to see the Howler Monkeys this morning, I decide to also wash off my running shoes, and put them out on the balcony to dry overnight.

A crowd of people gather on the beach to watch the spectacular sunsets each evening. As with elsewhere in the tropics, the sun sets in about twenty minutes…by 6:15pm it’s all over. I’ve taken some good photos of the sunsets over the last few days. Getting some subject matter in the foreground is always a challenge, but the colours are spectacular.

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