^TM

"Don't say a word!" hissed Ray. For over an hour the six of us had obediently trooped single file behind our taciturn guide through the moonless, muggy night, tripping over driftwood and occasionally each other. To our left, waves crashed. Somewhere off to our right, in the inky dark we knew was jungle, frogs and insects piped shrilly and howler monkeys grunted.

Now Ray had put the brakes on our clumsy little procession and was looking out to sea. He silently pointed. There, silhouetted against the gleaming breakers about 100 feet away, was a hulk the size of a small boulder.

We stared, scarcely breathing, straining to see something, anything. Was the boulder…moving? It was. After a long minute it merged with the black sand and vanished. Several more minutes passed. Then with excruciating slowness, a darker furrow began to etch the beach. Tracks!

We held our breaths. Even if we couldn't see it, all the signs were there; a living, ancient reptile was passing by. The endangered green sea turtle, chelonia mydas, was putting in an appearance after all.

The signal came to cover up. We hurriedly shrugged on the dark sweatshirts and windbreakers we'd been told to bring. Light-colored clothes sometimes result in aborted landings—"false crawls" in researchers' parlance—by skittish turtles that return to the ocean. It had happened to another group earlier that evening and was an unthinkable outcome for ours after coming all this way, no matter how awful the prospect of more clothes in the tropical heat.

Another sticky half-hour passed. Finally, the sound of snapping twigs told us our quarry had reached its destination at the jungle's edge. The big moment we'd all waited for was finally here.

With his red-tinted flashlight bobbing over the dunes, Ray led us 100 yards inland. He stopped again, trained the pool of pink light on a spot, and signaled everyone to gather round. We formed a semi circle and, heads bowed, contemplated the back end of a very large creature dropping a Ping-Pong-size ball into a shallow hole in the sand. More glistening spheres emerged and joined a growing clutch nestled at the bottom of the two-foot pit. Nobody spoke or moved. I felt like a brazen Peeping Tom. But if the sudden appearance of an audience bothered the turtle, who had modestly concealed herself almost completely beneath a tangle of kelp, she didn't show it.

We spent another minute or two playing reptile voyeur. Then Ray announced it was 10 o'clock, the beach curfew. No time left to watch our turtle cover her precious stash, much less watch her return to the ocean, where she would graze in underwater pastures until the same time, same place next year. We watched another egg plop out. Then, hot and tired, we reluctantly headed back to the boat.

Frankly, it wasn't quite what I had expected. We had paid good colones to see green sea turtles in Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park, a 44,000-acre refuge known as the largest nesting site in the Western Hemisphere. And frankly, I was looking forward to cavorting with lots of big, friendly versions of the box turtles I kept as a kid. To be honest, I had expected to see a beach filled with giant turtles, coming out of the water, going into the water, digging in the sand. Was this all there was?

Timing is everything with animals, especially the bashful creatures of Tortuguero. The next night's group of tourists saw half a dozen of the 300-pound, 4-foot-long turtles, possessing not only egg-laying ends but heads and shells and flippers. If we had come to Tortuguero one month later, we could have joined our guides in helping hundreds of tiny hatchlings out of their nests and down to the water for their first swim in the warm ocean. Oh, lucky September tourists!

But my ultimate turtle encounter fantasy could have been realized only in mid-century Tortuguero. Fifty years ago the animals came ashore by the scores, as on tropical beaches all over the world, and tourists interacted freely with the lumbering beasts. But with the freedom came poaching, which brought the green turtle to the brink of extinction in the 1950s. Strict guidelines for interaction-no touching, no cameras-were laid down in Tortuguero with the creation of the park in 1970. With this history in mind, the hindquarters of even one turtle are easier to appreciate.

Despite the hundreds of tourists who now visit annually, Tortuguero remains relatively wild. Located less than 50 miles south of Nicaragua on Costa Rica's northeastern coast, the area is accessible only by boat or small plane. The handful of lodges that have sprung up in the last decade must bring in potable water for drinking and cooking. Still, a visit is well worth the effort. In a country rapidly becoming an ecotourist playground, Tortuguero remains unique for its wildlife, geography, and people.

Referred to in some guidebooks as "Little Venice," the area boasts 167 miles of canals that run parallel to the Caribbean coastline. In some places, only 100 yards of land separate the canal from the ocean; in one or two spots the two bodies of water meet in a brackish confluence.

Unless you're on a tight schedule, arriving by boat is a treat not to be missed. A trip up the main canal takes about three hours but passes more like 30 minutes. Lined with giant palms, thick elephant grass, and masses of purple water hyacinth, the quarter-mile wide waterway is a mini version of the Amazon River, thronging with animal life. More than 350 kinds of birds frequent the canal, including 10 percent of the world's migrating species because Tortuguero lies directly beneath the flight path between North and South America. There's the odd-looking roseate hornbill, a conspicuous flyer with its heavy proboscis, and snowy egrets, green-backed herons, and the snakelike ahninga.

Once settled at your lodge, a $15 tour of the narrower local canals in an outboard-driven panga is a must. Sharp-eyed guides will make sure you see caimans, three-toed sloths, toucans and howler monkeys. The highlight of our 6 a.m. boat ride was a detour down a cano negra, a freshwater inland channel darkened by the tannic acid released from fallen leaves. Here we saw the aptly named Jesus Christ lizard skitter across the surface of the water on its hind legs. Luring them with crackers, our guide, Frankie, scooped up black water turtles and showed us the male's concave shell, which aids mating. You won't see them, but manatees also live in the canals.

Unlike the rest of Costa Rica, most of it descended from Spanish explorers, many of Tortuguero's inhabitants spring from Jamaican immigrants who arrived in the 19th century to work on the area's first railroad and banana plantations. Now tour guides or fishermen, most live in Tortuguero Village, a tiny shantytown of 300 that sits on a spit of land between the main canal and the ocean.

There isn't much to see or do in Tortuguero Village, but that's part of its laid-back appeal. Composed mostly of rickety shacks, small cafes and souvenir shops, the length can be walked in about five minutes. If you stay in a lodge on the village side of the canal, you can stroll into town at your leisure.

You'll want to stop in at the Visitors' Center and Museum and watch the short educational film on the green turtle. A local guide can point out small natural wonders you'd miss otherwise, such as the ground-hugging dormilona, a fascinating relative of the mimosa used as a sedative. When touched, the compound leaves instantly shrink back as if frightened. It became an irresistible game to stop and poke every dormilona we saw, just to see its bizarre reaction.

Practically every corner of Costa Rica offers a guided jungle excursion of some sort. Visitors to Tortuguero can hike up the "hill," an 18,000-year-old dormant volcano covered in dense rainforest. If you brought along those twin attributes of a good Central American traveler, a sense of humor and adventure, now's a good time to unpack them. Tortuguero Hill is beautiful, with huge palms and Costa Rica's famous giant blue butterfly, the Morpho. But as jungles go, it's an unusually steep hike. And like Australians, Costa Ricans love to talk about all the things in their country that can maim or kill you.

As we set out on our three-hour adventure, our guide Carlos repeatedly warned us not to stray from the trail or touch anything along the way. We gave wide berth to the jabillo, whose trunk is covered with large pyramid-shaped thorns. The tree's sap, used by locals to stupefy fish, can cause blindness. Carlos identified a swampy area as quicksand, just like the kind in the movies. Once you've stumbled into one of these treacherous bogs, he intoned solemnly, your only means of escape is to throw your body flat on the ground and inch your way to safety.

Then there's the weather. An overcast day on the Caribbean coast can quickly deteriorate into a full-blown thunder and electrical storm. As the heavens opened on our little group, Carlos pushed gamely ahead, identifying plants and animals first in Spanish for the six Spaniards in our group, then quickly in English for Paul and me. We took turns poking our heads into a small cave where small black tropical bats slept. Farther up the trail Carlos caught a golden toad, one of several dozens of types of beautifully colored poison dart frogs in Costa Rica. The bright-orange golden toad is so tiny—this one fit easily on the tip of Carlos' thumb—it's easy to miss unless you know to check places like the folded leaves of the prayer plant.

We peaked Tortuguero Hill at the same time as the storm. As Carlos shouted over the deluge, one of our exhausted party sat in a faint with his head between his knees and the rest of us stood like Goldie Hawn in the pivotal scene in Private Benjamin, rain streaming down our faces and the fronts of our waterlogged slickers. If only it were clear, Carlos bellowed, we would have a great view of the ocean from where we stood. We craned our necks in the direction he pointed and squinted through sheets of rain.

Heading back down, we discovered the storm had turned the steep trail into a muddy waterfall. As we struggled to keep our footing, there was a commotion from above. Someone had put his hand on an inch-long bullet ant, the biggest, nastiest ant in Costa Rica, capable of inflicting a wasplike sting.

After a minute or two the drama was over and the unhappy victim, cradling his right arm against his body, had recovered enough to resume the descent. Another moment later we were jolted by a deafening crack of lightning. "Ground yourself! Touch a tree!" Carlos shouted. I exchanged looks with the drenched hiker in front of me and could tell we were weighing the same choices: What would it be? Electrocution, or blindness by poison sap?

Stalking the green sea turtle is one of the least physically demanding pursuits on which one can embark in Tortuguero, and it can be the most rewarding if you don't give up. Don't see what you want the first time? Take the tour again. Chances are you'll be rewarded with a better sighting the next night. Or the next. Fifteen bucks is a small price to pay to rub elbows with a waning wonder. Although each nest holds more than 100 eggs, it's estimated only one in 1,000 hatchlings survive to adulthood some 25 years later. Even reaching its adult size of several hundred pounds does not guarantee a turtle will make it to the century mark, the estimated life span. Forays to find the best vegetation often take them into unprotected Nicaraguan waters, where humans still hunt turtles for meat. In Tortuguero, jaguars sometimes decapitate nesting females. "It's not a pretty sight," said Carlos gravely.

No kidding. Memo to the green turtle who graciously shared an intimate moment with tourists one sweltering night not so long ago: Be careful out there.

IF YOU GO

Getting there
Fly/drive: The quickest way to get to Tortuguero is by air.

Many lodges offer 30-minute charter flights from San Jose as part of their tour packages. Sansa and Travelair also fly there (from Pavas and San Jose, respectively) for about $90 per round trip. Alternatively, most lodges offer a bus and boat package. One of these will take most of the day, but it will give you the opportunity to see the central Costa Rican countryside and wildlife on the Tortuguero canal.

When to go
The green sea turtle (named for its flesh, not mottled brown shell) nests from June to October. Leatherbacks, the largest turtles at over 1,000 pounds, arrive in Tortuguero between February and April. Tortuguero is one of the rainiest spots on earth, averaging 200 inches a year. The good news is that storms don't last very long and it's easy to accomplish most activities if you're patient. The temperature remains in the mid to high eighties year-round.

Recommended gear
The key to enjoying any national park in Costa Rica is to wear loose-fitting, fast-drying clothes. Avoid denim and even cotton for outdoor activities and invest instead in nylon long-sleeved shirts and convertible pants. Available in the better outfitter stores such as REI, they can be expensive (up to $70), but by the time you've weathered a couple of rainstorms you'll appreciate their ability to dry out after a night draped across a shower rod. Bring some good-quality, broken-in hiking boots, but grab loaner rubber boots if your lodge offers them. Hikes can quickly turn into slogs through knee-high mud. Binoculars are a must, and for tours other than the turtle encounters (where cameras are forbidden), a good telephoto lens will help you capture at least a few decent shots of faraway fauna.

Local specialties
Tortuguero menus feature a range of dishes beyond the ubiquitous beans and rice. Some of the most expensive lodges serve pasta and lobster, but we enjoyed the Jungle Lodge's more modest fare, especially the sweetly syrupy fried plantains and the potato-like fried breadfruit.

Lodging
Accommodations are more comfortable than you might expect from a relatively remote tourist outpost. Rooms don't include telephones, TVs or central air conditioning-few places in Costa Rica do-but they're clean, charmingly spare, and surprisingly bug-free. In between outings into town, the jungle, or the canals, relax and swing in one of the big hammocks, sip drinks in a thatched-roof jungle bar, or cool off in the swimming pool.

Jungle Lodge Hotel; (506) 233-0133; fax: (506) 233-0778; 3 days/2 nights, $230 per person double occupancy, including roundtrip transportation from San Jose, 3 meals a day, and some tours; 50 simple but attractive rooms with varnished teak floors, ceiling fans, hot showers and hand bars. Swimming pool with ramp access. Optional turtle tours (in season) and canal tours. Delicious buffet-style meals, including welcome cocktail. Transportation across the canal to see Tortuguero Village is free but on a schedule.

SUGGESTED READING

Frommer's Costa Rica 2000 ($15.95) is a terrific no-nonsense guide to the country, including a short but information-packed section on Tortuguero. To read up on sea turtles, check out one of naturalist Archie Fairly Carr's lyrical books on these gentle giants. The founder of the Gainesville, Fla.-based Caribbean Conservation Corporation, Carr wrote The Windward Road: Adventures of a Naturalist on Remote Caribbean Shores ($13.56 at Amazon.com), one of the first books that called attention to the turtles' plight, after extensive visits to Caribbean beaches in the 1940s and 50s. In The Sea Turtle: So Excellent a Fish (University of Texas Press, $18.95), Carr summarizes the findings of the first 26 years of the Tortuguero tagging program. The more general Sea Turtles by Jeff Ripple ($13.56 at Amazon.com) includes 60 beautiful color photographs illustrating every sea turtle species.

OTHER OPTIONS

For truly close encounters with the turtles of Tortuguero, play researcher with Carr's Caribbean Conservation Corporation. Participants pay a minimum of $1300 a week, which includes transportation from San Jose, dorm-style lodging, and meals. In exchange, they get to help researchers tag and measure turtles, count eggs, mark nests, and record data. For details, go to www.cccturtle.org/program1.htm or contact the organization at 4424 NW 13th St. Suite #A1, Gainesville, FL 32609; 352-373-6441; 800-678-7853. E-mail: resprog@cccturtle.org

Back to TravelLady Magazine