Parque Nacional Tortuguero

This weekend I went to Tortuguero national park which is famous for turtles (it is not the season for them) and malaria among other things.
On our way to Tortuguero we stopped at a the Del Monte Banana Plantation and watched the assembly line harvest, clean, and pack the bananas for the US. We also passed by the Chiquita and the Dole banana plantations. A brief aside for all of you who are out there reading this from places with airconditioning and or screens on your windows. Dr Tristan who is the man at the helm of this Spanish Immersion ship gave us a lecture last week in which he chastized us for taking malaria prophylaxis. He said, and I quote ¨You only need that if you are A. going to a banana plantation, or B. going to Limon.¨ Ironically we spent most of the day in and around banana plantations and we ate breakfast and then lunch on the way home curiously near Limon. Fortunately I am not overly trusting of all humanity so I had chosen to continue my malaria meds.
I have decided that the insects here not only like Deet a lot, they relish it. The stronger the better it seems. They come to swim in it while biting us all the while. On Sunday night something (who knows what) the guide thinks it was a bullet ant, bit me on the middle finger and my arm swelled to twice the normal size and had red streaks within five minutes. I was told that at least it was not black, and that I should take 3 benadryl, which made me a tad drowsy. For the rest of the night I got to carry around one of my friends inhalers just in case my lungs decided to stop working. Comforting. It is currently still swollen, Hooray! I feel like a Redneck Calvin and Hobbes bumper sticker with a middle finger double the size it should be. Super!
So tortuguero... It is a fantastic park on the Carribean Sea that is made up of fresh water canals. I saw toucans, poison dart frogs, caimans, spider monkeys, lots of birds, lots of sunburned British humans taking pictures of birds, and lots and lots of howler monkeys.
On the way to the park, our guide had told us that we should all take the 5 am tour because we would be up early. People laughed him off. He was not joking. If you are wondering how the precious howler monkeys get their name, I found out first hand at about 415 am on Sunday morning when I was awoken and was pretty sure that King Kong and 700 of his closet friends had decided to come and eat all of the humans in our hotel. Apparently every morning the howler monkeys for around 2 hours roar and growl in a loud, Machismo, please-don´t-touch-my-remote-control kind of way. I was a little more accustomed to this type of noise than most, because I am related to the Swords´ men, however at first it was somewhat disturbing.
During the day I did some kayaking, I got schooled playing soccer on the beach and during that experience got to ingest some of the famous dark sand (it was not Team Sharkbites best day), went on a hike by myself (not suggested in the Costa Rican Jungle), was attacked by these really cool flourescent flies, and took a hike to the top of Cerro Tortuguero, the highest point in the park. I have never sweated that much in my entire life, potentially even collectively. It was absurd and none of those pictures will make it out of the depths of my computer.
The park is made up of solely of canals, and the only portion that is walkable is this hike. Even the town is technically in the park. The town is only a smallish dirt path that is surrounded by brightly colored buildings. Around 700 people live in the whole region.
On the hike, where I only spoke Spanish (hip hip hooray), I saw 2 snakes one which was hunting a poison dart frog and 2 Trogons a close relative of the Quetzal, as well as some really fantastic parasite plants.
Tortuguero is very difficult to get to because it always involves a 2 hour boat ride through connecting canals. I have heard that you can also fly in, but I didn{t see any place where a plane could land except the water.
The other thing of note that I spent a fair amount of time doing was walking around in search of the red eyed frog. This little guy is currently on the cover of Lonely Planet and is nocturnal. So picture me with my buzz light year flashlight (which I got at Target because it was the cheapest available and maybe I liked it) peering under various trees and bushes. I didn{t have any luck, but I did get two super fantastic bug bites on my forehead that very well could turn into horns they are so big. This morning one of my friends asked my what was wrong with my head.
On the way home from Tortuguero I spoke entirely in Spanish with the guide and two other passengers, which was very exciting. I sound like a cavewoman, but at least I am now understood.