We did two daytours into Corcovado national park which did not dissapoint us at all. They were awesome.

We saw more wildlife than we could imagine. Our favorite was the tour around La Sirena in the center of the National Park.

As Corcovado National Park was founded back in 1975 the conservation efforts paid off. It is the largest park in Costa Rica and covers about one third of the whole Osa Peninsula. Animal life is abundant and some really cool, weird and wonderful animals were spotted on our tours.

The first daytour we did was the daytour from San Pedrillo. We would get up early to head down to Cabinas Manolo, another hostel in Drake Bay that organises many tours for anyone interested. From the hostel we headed down to the beach to be picked up by our water taxi. After a boatride of about an hour we reached the San Pedrillo beach and set foot on land to start our tour.

The tour was a hike following the beach in the morning, when most animals were active and we could avoid the sun walking in the shadows on the edge of the rainforest. On the way back we would use the trails through the forest to avoid the blistering sun.

The second daytour we did was the daytour around the La Sirena rangerstation. Another early wake up call to head down to Cabinas Manolo would be followed by a long ride in the water taxi (almost 2 hours). This day was simply splendid. The amount of wildlife we saw was enormous since this area is so far away and not impacted too much from human civilization.

Highlights of this day included seeing a wild Tapir! We actually saw this specimen twice. Once in the mudpool where it laid down to cool off and be cleaned by fish? Sadly some guides (including ours) chose to lead their group into the river bed to give them a better view. The animal moved off pretty quickly after the disturbance. A second time Sandy spotted the animal when we headed down to the coast. We could see it swimming across the river to the other side. Both encounters were equally special.

Also some group members discovered a crested owl in the secondary-forest-part of the tour to our amusement. The guide, who was strict and insisted on everybody to follow him closely on the hike had only just mentioned his "rules". He hated waiting and after only 500m into the hike he lost almost all of the group after they spotted the crested owl. Grumpy he backtracked until he met up with the lucky finders to be amazed by what he saw. "This is a very special and rare find!". I couldn't stop laughing when we left the track only half an hour later to find some animals. There I was lucky enough to spot another crested owl resting on some branches! I couldn't resist to make a joke on how rare my find was :-) Our guide was really good and mocking a guide usually isn't working out well for the tour experience, but I just couldn't resist. He was a bit grumpy thereafter..