Tortuguero National Park

l Tortuguero l Arenal Volcano l Monteverde Cloud Forest l Guanacaste l Puerto Viejo de Limon l Carara National Park l Tiskita Jungle Lodge l Corcovado National Park l Manuel Antonio NP l

Tortuguero can be reached in a variety of ways: via a boat trip along the rivers from the Sarapiqui or Barra Colorado area, a bus-boat combination from San José passing through the spectacular Braulio Carrillo National Park en route, or via a 35 minute flight from the San José area.

At any time of year, Tortuguero is a special place. With its abundant wildlife, beautiful forest scenery along the waterways, quaint village and wilderness beach, it is a prime example of ecotourism in Costa Rica, and one of our most outstanding destinations.

Tortuguero National Park

Tortuguero National Park lays in the Northeast corner of Costa Rica on the Caribbean coast. Dominated by low-lying level lands covered by dense rainforest and connected by a series of rivers and canals, this is Costa Rica's "Little Amazon."

There are no roads here. Rivers and man-made canals (dredged to facilitate logging during the period 1940-1970) serve as the park's "roads." Access to the park is either by airplane or boat, and travel within is either by boat or foot. There are a few hiking trails for visitors in the park although they are often flooded by shallow water during periods of heavy rain. Rainfall averages about 14 feet a year! In the lowest areas the trees and palms are adapted to being periodically inundated by shallow water. The average temperature is 79°F (26°C), and only varies from about 69 to 89°F throughout the year.

The area's populated center is the small village of Tortuguero which lies at the national park's northern boundary and has a population of around 500. This little village is on a narrow strip of land flanked on its eastern edge by a 22-mile beach facing the Caribbean Sea. The surf is usually rough, and swimming in the ocean is not recommended due to dangerous currents-and sharks! On the west side of the village is the Tortuguero River, which serves as the community's "main street."

On the western shore of the river are more hotels and habitations. North of the village are hotels and an asphalt runway for small airplanes near where the Tortuguero River mouth enters the Caribbean. Traffic in the area consists of small boats shuttling workers from the town to the hotels, tour boats, a rustic barge with supplies for the community, and local residents traveling in boats or dugout canoes. Apart from this tiny "urban center," human settlement in the rest of the area outside the park is sparse, and a vast forest surrounds this populated center behind the sea.

Most visitors travel within the park by boat and this is the best way to enjoy the beautiful riverside scenery. The tour boats cruise slowly through the rivers and canals allowing guests to admire the waterways lined with flowering trees and vines, lofty palms, and lush tropical vegetation.

Beyond its outstanding natural beauty, this park is of great ecological importance. Tortuguero National Park has a terrestrial area of around 50,000 acres (20,000 Ha) and about 128,000 acres (52,000 Ha) of marine habitat. It provides refuge for about 400 bird species, almost 100 mammals, more than 250 reptiles and amphibians, and 2000 plant species including over 400 tree species. In its waters are 184 species of fish.

The park's greatest role is as host to the largest nesting population of green sea turtles in the western hemisphere. In addition to the green turtles, small numbers of leatherback, hawksbill and loggerhead sea turtles also nest here. "Tortuguero" is an appropriate name: it means "place of the turtles."

A Brief History of Tortuguero

In the small village of Tortuguero, Creole English and Spanish are spoken and residents are a mix of Spanish descent, Miskito Indians from the Nicaragua area, and Afro-Caribbean. This mixed heritage is a reflection Tortuguero's past history. Before the arrival of Europeans, the area was visited by indigenous peoples such as the Miskito Indians who hunted, fished, collected turtle eggs and killed turtles for their meat. By the middle of the twentieth century, people of Afro-Caribbean and Spanish descent moved in and out of the area, and began to settle-at least for a while-in response to commercial logging and commercial harvesting of sea turtles. The Indigenous hunters had a minor impact on the forests and wildlife of the region; however this was not the case with the arrival of the Europeans.

In his 1967 book The Sea Turtle, So Excellent a Fishe, turtle researcher Dr. Archie Carr chronicled the history of the green sea turtle in the region:

…"So long as the dangers of this time [the era prior to European arrival] on land remained natural ones-Indians, jaguars, and pumas for the old turtles; gulls, vultures, coatis, and the like for the eggs and young-the populations held their own. But then the Europeans came to the Caribbean, with ships to victual and slaves to feed. Through the centuries the turtle beaches were raided. Eggs were dried in strings like wrinkled beads, the old turtles were turned on their backs and either barbecued on the beach or hauled away on the decks of schooners…

The green turtle was an important factor in the colonization of the Americas. It was herbivorous, abundant, and edible-even when prepared by cooks not aware that it can be made a gourmet's dish. It lived all about the tropical littoral and grazed in schools on turtle grass pastures that now are mostly vacant. It nested in numbers in places where no turtles ever come ashore today, or come only one on a mile in a year. The British Navy counted on green turtle to extend its cruising in the New World. The Spanish fleets took on turtle for the voyage back home to Cadiz. A green turtle was as big as a heifer, easy to catch, and easy to keep alive on its back in a space no greater than itself. It was an ideal food resource, and it went into the cooking pots of the salt-water peasantry and tureens of the flagships alike...

…It is not possible to say how widely the green turtle nested in primitive times, but there were certainly several big rookeries in the western Caribbean, and probably many. Today there is only Turtle Bogue [Tortuguero]." …Tortuguero is the last stronghold for Chelonia [the green sea turtle] in half the Caribbean Sea. The colony has held out at the Bogue because of the isolation of the place. It is cut off from the hinterland by swamp and rain forest. To boats it offers no anchorage offshore and a dangerous bar to cross where the river enters the sea." But Dr. Carr continued: "But even so, when I first went there [to Tortuguero in 1955] the whole nesting beach was being worked intensively by turtle hunters. During those years, almost the only turtles that were able to nest and get back into the sea were those that came up in howling squalls that kept the veladores [turtle hunters] in their coco-thatch huts."

The nesting female turtles were being harvested for their meat to supply local demand and an international demand for canned turtle meat soup. Loggers in Tortuguero were harvesting the large, valuable trees in the area and eating meat from wild animals hunted in the forests and turtle meat. As this indiscriminate slaughter continued, the number of sea turtles nesting at Tortuguero was plunging drastically. At this time-and just in the nick of time-Dr. Archie Carr arrived. After viewing the situation at Tortuguero in 1955, Carr feared that the rate of turtle killing there would soon destroy the nesting colony of green sea turtles-as it had nearly everywhere else in the entire Caribbean-and was happening with other species of sea turtles elsewhere.

Dr. Carr was a professor of Zoology at the University of Florida, an adventurer, and a sensitive and eloquent writer. He was conducting studies on sea turtles of the world and searching for their nesting sites when he was informed of the importance of Tortuguero as a green sea turtle nesting location. He was appalled at the situation at Tortuguero and requested Costa Rican legislators to help protect the sea turtles. Because of his determination and hard work and the support of the Costa Ricans, an initial limited protection was given to the nesting turtles. Later, in 1976 the area was designated a national park to broaden the protection of the entire 22-mile beach to save the sea turtles and their nesting site at Tortuguero. Although there are still many threats to sea turtles today and numbers of sea turtles in many areas are still declining, the good news is that on the 22-mile beach protected within the park, some 50,000 green sea turtle nests have been recorded there in a single nesting season and during the last 35 years the number of nests at Tortuguero has tripled. We hope this upward trend will continue. Archie Carr, who died in 1987, would be pleased to know that the Tortuguero sea turtle nesting colony he struggled so hard to protect was saved.

Things to Do on Your Trip to Tortuguero

If you plan to visit Tortuguero during the Green Season (June through October), you can be treated to watch green turtles nesting. If you come at other times, the remaining life in Tortuguero is there for you. FOR THIS EXTRAORDINARY NATURE TOUR WE RECOMMEND YOU BRING A GOOD PAIR OF BINOCULARS!

Visitors to Tortuguero can go on turtle tours to see the female turtles laying their eggs at night. In late June green sea turtles start arriving during dark nights to nest and this continues into October. Tours to see a turtle laying her eggs can be arranged through the hotel with a local guide. Guests are only allowed on the beach with a trained guide, and should wear dark clothing. Only the guide can use a flashlight on the beach during the tour (it must be red), and no photography is allowed to minimize disturbing the turtles. Going on a night tour to see this ancient ritual, is a highlight of any tour to Tortuguero. The late Dr. Carr wrote: "Everybody ought to see a turtle nesting. It is an impressive thing to see, the pilgrimage of a sea creature back to the land its ancestors left a hundred million years ago."

In addition to sea turtles, there is much more to see at Tortuguero. So if you can only visit when turtles aren't nesting, the Tortuguero experience is still outstanding. The hotels give tours to the national park in small open boats with very quiet motors. The tours usually start before breakfast at 6:00 AM when the cool early morning temperatures make for a comfortable ride, and wildlife is most active. The 2-hour tours may be along the river's edge, or in a narrower shady canal under the canopy of trees and palms which arch over the water. The common raphia palms along the rivers' edges have fronds that are really single leaves and are the longest-leaved plants in the world-they can reach lengths of 50 feet! Some of the small rivers have very dark water from naturally occurring tannins (as in tea) from the fallen leaves.

On the tours you will usually see a tremendous variety of wildlife. Three species of monkeys live here and are often spotted feeding, sleeping or leaping among the branches. Sloths also feed or rest in the trees and move … ever … so …slowly. Herons, egrets, northern jacanas, toucans, slaty-tailed trogons, kingfishers, gray-necked wood rails, roseate spoonbills, brown pelicans, purple-throated fruit crows, white-collared manakins, prothonatory warblers and many other bird species can be seen from the boats or in the forests at Tortuguero. Basking on logs you can see several species of river turtle, spectacled caimans (small relatives of the alligator), prehistoric-looking emerald basilisk lizards and sometimes BIG American crocodiles. On the forest floor on the west side of the Tortuguero River are found the strawberry-red poison dart frogs. Huge 6-foot green iguanas can be seen on tree branches basking in the sun or feeding high above the river's edge. The keen-eyed boat drivers usually are the first to spot the wildlife along the river and point it out to their guests.

After the boat tour, guests have options of enjoying free time to walk on the beach, swim in the hotel pool, hike on forest trails (the hotels lend their guests tall rubber boots for these hikes), or visit the community center. An excellent museum with displays and videos on the region is worth visiting there. A few little gift shops are in the town too. Lunch is usually served around 12:30, and then later in the afternoon, around 3 o'clock, guests usually can enjoy another 2 hour boat tour as the afternoon cools, and animals become active again. Later, at dusk, bulldog fishing bats come out in some areas over the river to scoop up minnows feeding on surface insects.

Costa Rica's Little Amazon

For people looking for a Costa Rica nature tour, Tortuguero is ecotourism at its best. It is remote, sparsely populated by humans but densely covered by flora and fauna found only in a tropical, lowland rainforest. The pace and activities here are dictated by the natural rhythms of the seasons and the abundant life. If you choose Tortuguero, you will soon find that fitting into these patterns is exactly what you want to do.

l Tortuguero l Arenal Volcano l Monteverde Cloud Forest l Guanacaste l Puerto Viejo de Limon l Carara National Park l Tiskita Jungle Lodge l Corcovado National Park l Manuel Antonio NP l