Costa Rica Excursion Part 2: Rincón de la Vieja

(Friday 27 October 2006)
We were at the park by 8am, ready for a full day of hiking around the forests on the Rincón de la Vieja volcano. The first hike we did was supposed to be a 5km, 4-hour round trip hike to a waterfall. The forest here seemed so different from the forests on Ometepe—the trees were much taller and I didn’t see any of the scrappy vines and shrubs characteristic of the secondary growth on Ometepe. The highlight of this hike was all the wildlife. Much to my amazement, we saw wild spider monkeys right on the trail. Just a bit farther away we encountered a whole troop of wild capuchin monkeys foraging.


I wasn’t as excited about the boa curled up on the rocks we were trying to use to cross a stream, but it was still pretty cool. Not too long after our boa-sighting, I saw a large, furry, black-spotted shape dart across the path in front of us and disappear into the foliage beyond. Could it have been… a jaguar??!! I know they have these in Costa Rica, but sighting one would be quite rare. The body of this animal had been pale—almost white—not the yellowish-orange that I would associate with jaguars. Later at the ranger station, I tried to describe this animal and they told me that it probably was a jaguar. I’m still a little doubtful of that though; after looking through a bunch of pictures, I wonder if it might have be an ocelot instead. If anyone out there is an expert on big cats of Costa Rica, let me know what you think! Here's a photo of the path near where we saw the mystery cat:


At any rate, we eventually made it to the waterfall. It was pale blue amidst the green forest, and there was a crystal clear pool to swim in. We climbed over the rocks to get in for a swim, and after cooling off in the pool, we headed back on the trail.

Our next hike was much shorter and easier—a sort of self-guided tour through various regions of volcanic activity on the mountain. We saw bubbling hot springs, boiling mud, “volcancitos”—or “baby volcanoes,” and more troops of capuchin monkeys.


It was a long day of 6 or 7 hours of hiking; we were both thoroughly tired by the time we made it back to Liberia. We ate dinner and then tried to recoup for our next Costa Rican adventure.