Caño Island & Corcovado National Park

Saturday January 5th, 2013 – Caño Island & Corcovado National Park

Pretty much everything about today was fan-freaking-tastic. Breakfast was the best it’s been so far. Most days we’d have scrambled eggs and rice/beans and fruit – pretty standard. Today, those lovely kitchen folk pulled ALL the stops out.

We had banana pancakes with some sort of meat that looked kind of a long-wise slice of hot dog (perhaps SPAM?) with fresh papaya and pineapple. Ahhh I ate so much. It was delightful.

We loaded up shortly after breakfast for a day-long ADVENTURE!

Corcovado is located on the Osa Peninsula on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. The arrow is Cano Island.

A wee mappy of where we went.

We left Campanario by boat headed across the bay/expanse of ocean to Caño Island where we would be snorkeling. We could see Caño from the mainland but it was a lot farther than it looks like.

Cano Island as seen from Campanario

We spotted a pod of spotted dolphins and another pod of false killer whales. They swam right along our boats most of the way to the island.

Spotted Dolphins following our boat.

We splashed out of our boats and snorkeled around the corals off the coast of Caño. The island is closed to tourism so we didn’t actually get to land, the boats just hung out while we swam around.

Cano Island and the surrounding reefs

The water was so warm and clear – it was probably 20+ feet deep but we could see all the corals really well. The cover was way better than San Josecito. This was actually a reef, not a couple of rocks with coral growing on them.

Fish and Coral at Cano

There were big schools of Panamanian Sergeant Majors and assorted parrotfish  triggerfish, and several Guinea fowl puffers (SO DANG CUTE!).

Panamanian Sergeant Majors

Parrotfish!

Golden Phase Guineafowl Puffer

Rachel! Close enough to a fish.

I definitely saw a wee jellyfish and then got stung or had phantom pains that made me think I was getting stung… hard to say. There was apparently a group of eagle rays that swam through but I missed them. 🙁

Eagle Ray

The false killer whales followed us back to the mainland as we journeyed to Corcovado, a huge national park very close to Campanario where we would spend the afternoon hiking. We hiked through the park, it was very different from the rainforest around Campanario. This was sandy and mangrovey. Ecology. Cool stuff.

Posing with some huge trees in Corcovado.

We spotted a pair of curassows walking through the forest. They’re about the size of turkeys – BIG birds and so cool looking.

Female curassow in Corcovado

We arrived at a beach and hung out in the shade/lounged near a stream/ate our lunch for an hour or so and then hiked back to where the boats had dropped us off.

Wild Penn Staters basking in the tropical sun.

We spent the rest of the afternoon showering and cleaning up from our adventure (and applying aloe in many cases, that tropical sun is brutal). It was certainly an awesome day to get away from the station and see what else there was around Campanario.

So, now it’s your turn! Has anyone else ever been snorkeling somewhere tropical? Was it on a big reef or something small like the reef at Caño? Did you see any of the same critters? Do any of you happen to have a favorite tropical fish, akin to my obsession with puffers? Let me know, I’d love to hear about your snorkeling (or maybe SCUBA diving??) experiences!

¡Pura Vida!