Friday, April 15, 2011

15. Drake Bay - 3 days in a hammock (2-4 March)

So there I was in paradise, its day 2 of my trip to Drake Bay.  I can see the ocean from just about everywhere at the resort and the patio of my cabina.  I can hear the ocean all night long (well the bits I was awake for and when I woke in the morning).  Its no surprise I had already decided to extend my stay by 2 days, so Im staying 8 nights instead of 6!  Im sure my travel agent thought I was mad when I contacted him and asked him to change my pickup
arrangements, he already thought 6 nights was too long!
The package included one tour to Corcovado National Park and one tour to Isla de Cano  (yes, that place we went to from MA where the boat broke down, we didn’t see much and had an all round not so good day)...but as always Im optimistic, I will give it another try.   But whats the rush, right?   Ive got 8 nights.  The grounds are beautiful here,
there are hammocks, I have books to read and Sudoku to do.  And then there are the 3 meals a day that are included also.  This includes at least 2 courses at lunch and dinner and fruit, cereal and numerous cooked items for breakfast.  Hopefully the hammocks are strong!!  Somehow, the chef seems to manage to serve something different every day.  And you know its fresh when you see the fish coming in straight off the boat!!  We all dine together and it creates a great atmosphere for sharing experiences.  Stories about sightings of birds, boa constrictors and whales abounded. Still, the hammock appealed.
I was encouraged by Kristof and his wife (whose name I dont have, my apologies), who had not been on a tour in the 2 weeks they had been there.  They had become record holders by staying at the Drake Bay Wilderness Lodge for a month (beating the previous record by 2 weeks) So yes, other than doing yoga, blogging and eating meals I spent a great deal of time in the hammock over the next 3 days.  I did manage to drag myself out after dinner one night (3 March) to go to the Night Tour. This made me feel better as each night Adrian or Brian (sons of the owner) would come around and take down which tours people wanted to take the next day.  They had given up asking Kristof but I figured after booking this they would keep trying with me!  The night tour is with Tracie Stice, a biologist affectionately known as the Bug Lady and her husband, Gianfranco, a naturalist,  whose notoriety hasnt given him a nickname yet.  I think he could be known as the snake man as he found two in the dark while we were walking around.  
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My friend Chris had mentioned to me that the night tour was really good.  He said you see all types of nocturnal insects etc.   "If you were brave enough to do it".. he added.  Hmm, Im a wild woman now right? Of course Im brave enough she says...trying to block out her knees knocking together.  So I booked in for the tour and it was outstanding.  I felt better when I was able to convince Marianne who was also staying at the lodge to come with me.  Okay so I didn’t hold the chunk headed  snake that was only as thick as my little finger...but hey, he could still digest an iguana up to 10 times his own size!  We saw a
 masked tree frog, furry grey stripey spider (cant remember the name), the snake as mentioned and a cats eyes snake (often mistaken for the deadly fer de lance snake).  We weren’t offered to hold this one as it is venomous but not deadly.  A tiny humming bird was sleeping on a branch above our heads.  Apparently they can drop their body temperature by up to 30C to save energy due to their heart rate being up to 1200 bpm active and 500 bpm resting!  There was an owl butterfly caterpillar, a kinkajous, a net casting spider, another spider that rolls up its web and eats it at the end of the night, several trap door spiders, including one that gave a wonderful show of pushing away the guides pointing stick and closing its door.  A click beetle that has 3 biolumenescent spots, two on its mid section and one underneath, supposedly the most bioluminescent creature on the planet.  We also saw a walking stick insect which the guides got down to show us up close and then it returned very carefully.  The guides were great, Tracie with her keen eye for spiders and John with his eye for snakes.  Between them they presented really interesting information about what we had seen along with some funny anecdotes and serious facts.  Due to a tendency for the discussion to be about venomous snakes and spiders, there was a lot of confirmation asked of me (being Australian) about "you have those back home" or "have you seen one of those"!  It is "rumoured" we have a lot of nasty stuff in Australia...:)!  We also saw what we thought was a rather large wolf spider on the way back to our lodge but Tracie rather delicately pointed out they do get bigger than that....eek!  Luckily they tend to eat each other which we agreed was a good thing...:)! My photos ar not very good but I have still included some here.  If you want to see and read more her website is  http://www.thenighttour.com/index.htm.  This was a really great tour, well worth doing



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