Cahuita National Park. Costa Rica, province of Limon. Southern Caribbean Cruise. Day 4.

After visiting the apiary, where thousands of stingless bees live and work, we moved on. The second point of our big excursion was a visit to the Cahuita National Park.

As I understand it, we went to the city of Cahuita, next to which this park is located.
It’s difficult for tourists like us to quickly figure out where we’re going from and where we’re going, because different towns and regions merge into one another.
The guide talks about this, of course, but I don’t always get it, and I don’t always understand fluent English.
Subsequently, I read that, indeed, forty kilometers from Limon there is the town-village of Cahuita, where, unlike Limon itself, tourists often come, thanks to the presence of the national park of the same name in the neighborhood.
The town itself consists of hotels for tourists and just houses, without any other attractions.

We drove for about 30 minutes. I shot several videos, you can watch them at the bottom of this post on my YouTube channel, just the road along the sea.
The areas along the road were different, somewhere there was a village, and somewhere there were large estates planted with flowers and with a landscaped garden - a vegetable garden.
Lush greenery from which people are reclaiming their place to live.

The park is located along the sea.
The dense greenery here is like a jungle.

Cahuita Park, on the Caribbean Sea, is widely known for its paradisiacal beach scenery and abundance of wildlife.
We really wanted to see the sloth when we took this excursion, and we saw it on the way to the apiary. But there he was high, and here we saw him very low on the tree.

This sloth was sleeping right next to the cafe near the entrance to the park.
The entrance to the park is located right in the city. It's actually free.
We didn't pay anything because we had a full excursion program.
If you just came to the park yourself, then upon registration you can leave a donation in any form. But they will not specifically ask for any money from you, and they will not issue you a ticket.

You can also leave your things at the reception, but keep in mind that the park is a walk-through park, and if you just want to walk from one entry point to another exit point for several kilometers, then it is better not to leave your things, because it will be inconvenient for you to return.

Immediately near the entrance there are clutches of turtles.
They are fenced, sand is poured there, and turtles in eggs develop in them, then they hatch and all run to the sea.

The park stretches along the coast, there are many open wild beaches. Many people come here just to swim and relax on the shore.
And many people come here just to walk along the park, like hiking.
Here on these signs you can read the trails, how many kilometers to which place you need to go.

The path is narrow, everyone walks along it in single file, in one direction and the other.

The entrance from Cahuita officially closes at 14:00, and the park itself at 16:00, but it seems you can go there around the clock along the shore or through the forest, it is not fenced.
We came across a very good guide. Funny, smiling and very talkative.
He spoke a lot in English and with soul.

We walked through the park a little. As I understand it, our guide’s tourist task was to show us the inhabitants of the park, some animals and some plants.
The guide simply knew who lived where, and we saw everything we wanted.
I read about the park from some bloggers on the Internet.
One wrote that he saw nothing there except spiders and fallen trees.
Apparently, just because he didn’t know where to look.
And the guides know.

This is where a yellow snake lives, the guide said that it is poisonous.
The snake is just sleeping, but looking at us.
It is on a tree far from the path, you can take a closer photo to see it.
Nobody dared to come very close, of course.
The snake is bright and beautiful (if you see the beauty of snakes, of course, I, for example, am very afraid of them).

Musties happily jump through the trees somewhere high in the crown, sometimes they go down and run on the ground. They live in flocks, many with cubs.

This is the plant the guide showed us. Here is a flower, bright red, almost burgundy.
It turns out that this flower collects water inside after rain, and the water inside remains absolutely clean and fresh.
The guide simply took such a flower and poured a handful of water from it onto his palm.
If you are lost in the jungle and there is no water, you can safely drink water from such a flower.

The cutest and cutest were the leaf beetle ants.
Their ant path crossed our human path from the anthill on the sea side to the forest.
This is clearly visible in the video.
In photographs, small ants are difficult to see without macro photography.

All the green leaves you see in the two photos above are carried by ants that you can't see.
And this is the sand anthill in which they live.

We walked about 1 km deep into the park.
All the other groups walked the same distance, and came across us when they were walking back.

Overall, we were pleased with our trip to the park.
We looked at the animals and walked around the park.
We also saw this almond nut. I didn't know almonds came in this size.

After the park we boarded the bus and went back to the port to our cruise ship to get back on board.
They left the green park and beaches behind and in their memories.

We returned tired but happy to the shore and said goodbye to Costa Rica.

And we went to our cruise ship to sail in the evening, and the next day we would be in Panama.

And these are a few videos from my YouTube channel.

By the way, subscribe, I post various videos there quite often, unlike posts that I rarely write here. 🙄

To be continued.

All photos and videos are the property of the author.

Read the first posts about our South Caribbean cruise here:

1. Cruise in the Southern Caribbean.

2. Cruise in the Southern Caribbean. Day 1. Boarding. What new cruisers need to know.

3. Cruise in the Southern Caribbean. Day 2. Let's look at the line

4. Cruise in the Southern Caribbean. Day 2. Liner. "Vision of the seas", what are the cabins here.

5. Cruise in the Southern Caribbean. Day 3. Sushi restaurant "IZUMI" on deck 12 of the liner.

6. Cruise in the Southern Caribbean. Day 4. Costa Rica. Arrival at the coast.

7. Excursion to the apiary with bees without stingers in Costa Rica. Cruise in the Southern Caribbean.

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