tapir-tastic

After a day off Fiona was ready to join us and did so by taking the fifteen minute flight to La Sirena ranger station

Fiona arriving in style - I felt like a bit of a cheat having a day in the hammock while Ralph sweated 22kms then casually flying in over the forest for 15 mins in a Cesna (sorry no more info than that Dad) but it was that or miss it all.  The view was great, we took off from downtown Puerto Jimenez, flew over town, then fields and then Corcovado national park began.  We flew over the forest which looked like hills of broccoli, very steep and divided by lots of rivers, over lots of flying parrots then just before we reached the sea we landed on this airstrip right next to the ranger station where Ralph was waiting with news of his tapir encounter!

White whiskered puffbird - one bonus of Fiona flying in was that she brought Roger's scope with her so we could get amazingly good views and photos too.

Slaty tailed trogon

Strange fish tailed spider

Double toothed hawk

spider monkey

We stopped for lunch by the Rio Claro after spending a few hours fruitlessly looking for Tapirs

You can just make out the tiny male orb web spider above the female

hawk

great tinamou

Violacious trogon

After lunch we were walking along the trail where Ralph had seen the Tapir earlier that morning and a large bird swooped down and ran along the ground and  into the jungle. When we got a better look we saw it was a collared forest falcon taking down something in the leave litter, possibly a snake - it was pretty amazing.

After much trudging Roger finally decided to take us to the most popular mud hole for the tapirs which many of the guides go to. We had to wait our turn on the trail until the some people had finished looking, but when we got there we were amazed to see 2 tapirs, a mother a baby. Not only that, in the same mud pool was a speckled caiman swimming about. The tapirs were so relaxed and we stood silently for 15 mins watching lizards run across the mum without her moving a muscle it was a really amazing experience.

The baby tapir

spectacled caiman

baby and caiman

nice teeth

The mums face was nearly camel like, she didn't seem to mind the lizard at all

She also had lizards on her back

Sadly our tapir watching was interrupted after 25mins by another group being led by a guide that was a complete idea. He loudly blundered towards the mud hole shouting at the top of his voice which caused the tapirs to be disturbed and move off. This was bad for both the tapirs and the people trying to watch them, we were glad to have taken the time to find a good guide.

The beautiful american pygmy kingfisher

grey headed tanager

At the end of the day we went to look for sharks at the river mouth

A bull shark

Us with Roger, you can see that Ralph is in urgent need of a haircut

The Sirena ranger station