Our new friend Aryn had talked about the enthusiasm one of the guides at Luna Lodge brought to the tours and the sense of history that was infused as he interpreted nature. The guide he recommended was a man named Eric who had been working at Luna Lodge in different capacities since Lana started building her dream.
Eric was born in the tiny town of Carate at the end of the gravel road on the coast. All that seems left of the town is a small store next to a grass airstrip where a few chartered flights land a week. Eric’s father was a gold miner in the days when there was commercial mining in the riverbed that you travel on for the last few kilometers to the lodge. There is no longer any commercial mining (it is officially banned), but there are still a few shacks (seeing which my wife proclaimed as we first passed them on our way into the lodge, “I hope that is not where we are staying”) on the banks of the Rio Carate that gold panners live in and keep their supplies. Eric seemed to know them all as we began our tour of discovery.
This tour was in the back of a pickup truck with padded bench seats. Though we traveled mostly the same roads as we had on our way to the lodge, we saw a lot more as Eric tapped the side of the truck each time he spotted something of interest. The driver would stop and we would hop out. Eric would set up his high-powered spotting scope focused on the creature. One of the best things we saw was a group of Mantled Howler Monkeys harassing a sloth (pictured above). This was the first time on this trip that I got a good look at howler monkeys when there was enough light (but barely) and I had a camera with me. It was also the first time and only time in Costa Rica that we saw a sloth actually move on this trip. My wife very much appreciated the scope and Eric’s patience and enthusiasm. Most of the things I was seeing through my camera’s zoom lens, my wife was not able to see in enough detail to make it worth her while. With the aid of Eric’s Swarovski scope, she could actually enjoy the animals and their antics. She also enjoyed talking to Eric about family life on the Osa Peninsula, and his dreams to see Yellowstone (still my favorite place in the world) and Yosemite National Parks in the United States.
Eric worked hard for us (he looked a bit like a Costa Rican Steve Irwin) as he quickly moved through the rainforest to get us in position to see the endangered Central American squirrel monkeys, which I had not yet photographed. I wish I got better pictures, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. Click here, if you would like to see what I got on this tour. He also looked hard for the green and black dart frog, a species common in this part of Costa Rica, but the weather had been so good for humans lately (we had no hard rain the whole stay in Costa Rica) that the ground was pretty dry. Eric said after a good rain there would be thousands of them hopping about. No worries though…it was the first dart frog species I bred in captivity in my classroom and I had one that lived for about twenty years. We did see a few other frogs, some smaller than a chocolate chip hiding in the leaf litter.
All in all it was a good last tour at Luna Lodge. My wife thanked Eric for his time with a nice tip that she called the beginning of his Yellowstone fund.