Middle-aged flash packers

Overnight visit to Sirena Ranger Station
Before we came to Costa Rica we booked an overnight stay at Sirena Ranger station to experience Corcovado rainforest at every time of day and hopefully see rainforest wildlife in its natural habitat.
We got up at silly o’clock as it is a 1 and a half hour boat ride to the station. Our guide was the characterful Mr Carlos Pacheco who looked after us, pointed out interesting wildlife and generally entertained us for the two days.
As we jumped off the boat and walked towards the station, we immediately saw an iridescent cornflower blue butterfly. As we were admiring it, a small aeroplane roared towards us and took off, literally skimming our heads.
“Ah, this is the landing strip” Carlos casually informed us. Welcome to Sirena.
We found our dormitory which we were sharing with a young couple who had already laid out their stuff on the one shelf with military precision and a whiff of OCD. With the couple of inches left to us, we bundled a load of stuff out of our rucksacks, left it in a heap and rushed off to meet Carlos for our first walk in the jungle.
It was amazing. Straight away we saw a troupe of squirrel monkeys, twirling through the trees like accomplished acrobats, never missing a move. We heard the howler monkeys with their booming and frankly scary callings and saw a tamurando which is a type of anteater. I could bore you with all the detail, but suffice to say we had a great walk and a great day.
Our dinner was typical Costa Rican casado – rice, beans, veg, salad and meat. Yum.
However, here comes the downside.
Forty people and twelve seats do not make for a relaxing evening. With nowhere to sit we were forced to go to our dorm and read our kindles. So what’s the problem? Think being locked in a steam room with all your clothes on with the added pleasure of a myriad of bugs flying around. My mosquito net had an adult sized head rip in it where someone had obviously had a panic attack and jettisoned themselves through it, no doubt because of some scary flappy thing they couldn’t see but could feel in their bed.
Also Carlos had forgotten to tell us that the electricity goes off at 9pm every night, a piece of information that Steve would have found quite useful as he was in midstream in the toilet when it happened. Needless to say he wasn’t that happy when he got back to the dorm.
Our room- mates settled themselves in and we were all co-existing by torch light when a revolting looking hard -shelled bug crawled onto my kindle. As we had company I resisted the urge to hurl it across the room and scream so I mentioned to Steve that there was an unpleasant animal on my reading device.
“Kill it” was the unhelpful and ecologically unfriendly advice. At least it got a giggle from one of our roommates but the bug was so disgusting I couldn’t face squishing it so it took up residence on the inside of my mosquito net.
The rest of the night passed in a haze of sweating profusely, trying not to shuffle around and disturb our roommates, Steve waking me with his snoring and me waking myself up with my snoring. (We’ve both got colds). I think our dorm comrades hated us so much after this, they deliberately got up at 3 and banged stuff about until 4 (supposedly going on an early morning jungle trek) just to get their own back.
Getting up at 4.45 was actually a relief and stomping about in the jungle was far preferable to lying in a bunk bed, dehydrating.
The morning passed pleasantly with a sighting of a tapir plus more squirrel monkeys and various birds. We were very grateful to Carlos who was a pleasure to spend time with and shared some great stories. He also gave us some good advice as to other places to visit that are a little more off the beaten track.
One thing both Steve and I noticed was how unhappy many of the day tourists looked. You can visit the rainforest and have a tour without staying overnight at the ranger station. It’s a much cheaper option. We asked Carlos about this and he said that unfortunately many tourists expect to see wildlife to order and are very disappointed if it doesn’t appear. His view is the park is not a zoo, and he’s right, but I fear that unhappy tourists may put pressure on the authorities and guides and that the park will compromise its principles. I hope that doesn’t happen.