Casa Orquideas and Esquinas River at Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica
Welcome to Costa Rica, after several days in beautiful Panama enjoying the marine ecosystems, it was time to explore the land ecosystems. The first stop of the National Geographic Sea Lion in Costa Rica was at the small town of Golfito, in order to clear customs. Golfito was an important town around the 1940’s for the exportation of bananas by the United Fruit Company.
After all the paper work was taken care of, we took off to our morning destination, Casa Orquideas. It is more than a botanical garden; it is a great collection of plants ranging from orchids, bromeliads, hibiscus, gingers to tropical fruits like pineapples, papayas, bananas and more. The creators of this plant-lover paradise are a couple of expatriates, Ron and Trudy MacAllister, who landed here almost 30 years ago.
Plants are masterpieces of evolution; because they are rooted to a substrate, finding a way to get pollinated or escapes from a predator is not an easy task. For that reason all their different strategies to attract or deter are incredible. For example, orchids are masters of disguise, some species will make their flowers look like a female wasp in shape, color and smell in order to attract the male, who comes and thinks he is copulating with a female of his kind. Other times bees approach orchids in order to gather the chemicals that the flower is exuding, to use them as their own cologne to attract their female counterparts. But the garden was not just about plants, some were lucky enough to see incredible scarlet macaws, an 18 inches scarlet red parrot and toucans flying by.
The afternoon activity took place in a mangrove ecosystem, in which the plants must deal with bracket water, tides and poor oxygen soils. Mangroves are not a plant family but a group of plants from different families which have adapted their physiology to out survive this ecosystem. The most common species we observed along the Esquinas River were red, tea, white and black mangroves. For instance, the red mangrove stores the extra amount of salt in the older leaves that are about to drop. The black mangrove forms prop roots which are cover by lenticels, which are openings that aid in the gas exchange for the plant, so when it is low tide they use as much surface for that matter and when it high tide they remain closed.
The guests that decided to take the Zodiac rides were able to admire not just the mangrove forest but the rain forest up river as well. Entangled in the vegetation two tree Boas, curl up and waiting for their next meal. The kayakers took a more tranquil trip through the mangroves and spotted white ibises, snowy egrets and little blue herons. It was a great day to start a new adventure in a new country.
