IMAGES: GETTY; AWL IMAGES; AMELIA DUGGAN
COSTA RICA
To my left, the ocean sucks and hisses. On the right, I glimpse movements in the treetops; the forest seems alive
patterns on her tail feathers. “See how she becomes green and gold in the sunlight?” Greivin says, commentating with the rapid-fire urgency of a sports commentator. “And look, a male!” Our group of birders frantically reposition spotting-scope tripods to get a closer look. With his colours even brighter than the female and his thin, twin, forking tail feathers almost at full length, the male cuts a long, serpentine shape in the air, bobbing as if coasting on waves. It’s a divine visitation, brief and dazzling; the birds dine and dash back into the forests, leaving me with memories so bright they could have been hallucinations.
Clockwise from top: rainforest meets the Pacific at Corcovado National Park; a black-crowned Central American squirrel monkey, an endangered species found in southern Costa Rica; one of the 20 tents at La Leona Eco Lodge on the Osa Peninsula
When it rains The journey to reach my next lodge in the country’s most remote and biodiverse outpost, the turtle fin-shaped Osa Peninsula in the far south, takes the best part of a day and a relay of transportation. Back on the twisting Pan-American, I drive in glorious sunshine through soaring vistas, where wispy clouds snag on dragon-spine peaks. Where the road kisses the Pacific at the backpacker resort of Dominical, I switch onto the Costanera Highway, traversing the Golfo Dulce Forest Reserve to eventually wind up in the low-slung town of Puerto Jiménez. Meeting my transfer beside the airstrip (the flanks of which double as the local cemetery), a hardier vehicle then bounces me along rutted dirt tracks and through swollen streams to the hamlet of Carate. It’s here, on the edge of a spectacular dark-sand beach that seemingly stretches for miles, I’m met by a cart horse and a quad bike. “Normally we’d just load your bags on the horse and ask you to hike the two-miles to
the camp, but the tide’s coming in fast — and a storm,” says La Leona Eco Lodge manager Agustín Briones, revving up the quad bike. “You better hop on.” Under mutinous, lead- grey skies, we zoom along the deserted beach, weaving around scattered coconuts and fording shallow streams seeping from the dense tree line. To my left, the ocean sucks and hisses, waves spilling lace-work foam under our wheels. On the right, I glimpse movements in the treetops; the forest seems alive. The lodge, I discover, merges seamlessly
with these surroundings. Simple, ocean-front safari tents with alfresco showers gaze out on the water; at night, the property’s rustic trails and open-sided canteen is illuminated by little more than stars and candlelight. “Sometimes you can search for days for an animal and then it just shows up at the lodge,” Agustín says, as he serves me a classic Tico (Costa Rican) supper of fried snapper, plantain, and beans and rice that night. Rain hammers torrentially on the iron roof of the canteen, competing with the riled-up Pacific to drown out our conversation. “We even had a puma come right through the lodge when it was quiet here, out of season. We had to escort guests around.” Undeterred, I strike out in the morning
with local nature guide Alvaro Montoya to Corcovado National Park. At 164 sq miles, it’s the largest in Costa Rica; it was created in 1975 to disperse the logging and gold rush industries that had taken root here. A trailhead lies just a short walk from the lodge. Almost as soon as we enter the forest, the sightings begin. There’s a grazing troop of squirrel monkeys in the canopy, an agouti rodent rooting in the undergrowth and a self- assured anteater strutting up ahead.
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