Exploring Sirena

Sirena Ranger Station

I woke up at 5:30 am for the second straight morning (that's gotta be a record for me) to our guide shaking our tent. I remember not sleeping well at all on any given night on the Osa Peninsula. It is incredibly humid, especially inside a tent! But, it's either that or sleep outside and endure the nightmare of countless bugs that flood the night air...I'll take the hot tent thank you.

William took off that morning for Carate, our destination town for tomorrow, half-abandoning us. You see, he had another tour to cover the next day. We paid for two days; all we got the second day was a half-hour tutorial of where the trail heads are for day hikes. So that was a bummer. We thought we'd have him for at least half the day.

Turns out we didn't need him after all! Well, for today anyways. We saw plenty of wildlife. Our first hike was the Guanacaste Trail which was short and sweet. The only highlights were seeing an agouti and a brown parrot snake.

Nice shot looking up into the trees.

Later, we walked down the airstrip which led to the beach. Another short walk but enjoyable nonetheless.

Side note: I needed to have my camera available at any moment, and the only place I could clip it to my belt was at the center of my waistline. Yeah my pictures came out a little awkward but I wasn't there to impress anyone, haha.

To our surprise, we got back to the station at 9:45 am. We still had the whole day to explore! So, after checking out the exhibit a little more, we packed a lunch and hit one of the longer trails.

I thought this hummingbird nest was pretty neat. It had the diameter of only a quarter!

We decided on the Río Claro Trail. The first few hours weren't full of much wildlife and we were initially disappointed. Sirena was supposed to be the center attraction! We reached the Río Claro and had lunch.


Just as we were about to leave, we heard some loud rustling behind us to our left. Patiently, we waited for the source of the noise to appear. It was a mother tapir and her baby! The Baird's Tapir to be exact - the only place you can see them in the world. An amazing sight. They were slowly foraging the ground for food. We saw them cross the river too! It was a hot day for any creature out there so I'm sure they enjoyed the water.


Satisfied with our wildlife spotting for the day, we continued hiking. We didn't get very far because this was blocking our trail:

It was a good 5-6 feet long and I thought it was a boa. We had plenty of time to get pictures, as it was pretty content with where it was.


In fact, it hung around a little too long. The trail was too steep on either side to walk around it, so I threw some twigs at it to get it moving. Slither by slither it finally cleared the way for us. Later we looked it up in William's reptile guide book (he left us with access to his locker) and discovered it to be a black-tailed crebo, which basically means non-venomous and non-boa. Aw shucks. It was neat anyway, haha.

Here are some other cool sitings:

One of the many lizards and anoles we saw in Corcovado.

Nothing new for me growing up in Arizona, but still awesome! It's not a scorpion, rather its molting.

A frog chilling out and blending in.

The only Golden Orb Spider we saw not on a web. We ran into spider webs constantly throughout the trail. Andrew and I took turns going first simply to share the nuisance of walking through them. As William showed us earlier, their webs are super strong and thicker than you'd think. Luckily this species didn't often build over the trail.

Thoroughly content with the hike and sensing the end of the trail, we realize that nature isn't done with us yet. Another loud rustle up on our right stopped us dead in our tracks. It was a herd of collared peccary! There were a good 12 of them. They half-charged us, too. Check out the video for yourselves:

Coming soon, Sirena to Carate hike!