Writings By Location| Journey to Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
It was not exactly a horrible night. It was worse.
Neither Erin nor I barely slept at all. Nine hours of tossing and turning, and occasionally falling asleep for maybe half an hour at a time. Neither of us coudl get comfortable on the narrow bed and overly-stuffed pillows that wouldn't let our head lie flat. (Not sure why I listened to her when she said we should share a twin bed.) The room wasn't the worst part, though, it was the stickiness. Because we were in the jungle, and in what essentially amounted to a log cabin, we had to sleep fully covered in insect repellent, because the walls certainly weren't going to be enough of a deterrent. So any position we picked, we'd have skin from one part of our body peeling off another part, making it just gross and uncomfortable. We were gross, miserable, and reeking the whole night. Add to that the fact that the roosters here are about as bright as...well...rosters. It's not like they can tell time, so it's no wonder they were crowing at 3am, long before even the most liberal interpretation of dawn.
Erin and I got maybe 2 hours sleep each. We wanted to take a shower, but couldn't because the hot water was turned on. Of course, that didn't stop me from pooping 3 or 4 times again. My bowels seem to enjoy getting all their work out of the way in the first 60 minutes of the morning. I wish they could just do it all at once.
We grabbed some bottled water and met up with Rubin, our guide, to leave on a personal tour of the lagoon. We drove over to the lagoon, and climbed into his little twelve-seater boat, taking the seats closest to the back, so he wouldn't have to shout to be heard. (And, being the only ones there, it just seemed like it would be pretty rude not to.) The sky was just beginning to lighten as we hit the water.
Rubin used to work in the city, but moved out here and started doing this about 5 years ago. He's done quite well for five years, because he sure does know his stuff. Rubin would drive the boat for a while at maximum speed (which wasn't much, given it was only a 60 hp motor), then stop and cruise at a really slow pace, or sometimes shut the motor off completely, while looking and listening for interesting forms of native wildlife. He would point out each bird as he saw it, then we'd each spend several seconds looking in the direction he pointed. Usually, Erin would see it first, and go "oh wow" — at that point, I typically gave it about five more seconds, then would agree that, yes, it was beautiful, even though I had no clue what they were talking about.
Most of the time, though, I did see the birds Rubin was pointing out, including cormorants, snowy egrets, jacanas, great kiskadees, yellow-headed parrots, amazon kingfishers, belted fishers, great blue herons, ruddy crakes, bat falcons, and a couple of giant (at least six-feet long) spiky tree iguanas. Many of the feathered creatures were quite colorful, although we probably wouldn't really have known if not for the book Rubin kept opening up to show us, and my binoculars. Let me just say here that I am awarding myself 5000 bonus points for remembering at the last minute to pack my binoculars. Because without them, most of the birds just looked like gray specks in the distance, barely distinguishable from each other.
If not for my binoculars, I probably would have thrown myself overboard out of sheer boredom, but even with them, the tour was interesting, long, diverse, relaxing, and long. Three and a half hours was a bit too much bird-watching for me. (The fact that I had to poop again for the last hour or so didn't help.) I think I prefer seeing them in an aviary, where they aren't so far away, and the bird-to-foliage ratio is a little more pleasing.
