Rincón de la Vieja

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  Rincon de La Vieja National Park, Province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Today I went to the Rincón de la Vieja (The Old Lady's Corner) National Park. Rincón de la Vieja is the name of an active Costa Rican volcano and this park protects the volcano, neighboring volcanoes and the watershed that stems from their slopes.  That watershed is significant and includes 32 rivers and 16 seasonal streams which combined provide most of the water for the entire province of Guanacaste to the west.

I didn’t attempt a hike to the volcano’s crater but did a hike on its flanks entering at the Las Pailas ranger station.  A paila is a kettle or a large cooking pot and is the term used for the mud pots and other geothermally active pots scattered along the trail.

Having learned my lesson at Palo Verde, this time I wore a long sleeve shirt, jeans and liberally slathered insect repellant on all exposed skin.  Either that worked or the mosquitoes weren’t as active at Rincón de la Vieja as they were at Palo Verde.

I didn’t see the animal life I would have liked to.  Probably, in part, due to the fact that I frequently had my eyes pointed down at my feet, trying to pick the least muddy part of the trail to walk on.  Even doing my best, several times I sank several inches into the muck.  You can see why looking at the attached photos of the trail.  That’s one of the consequences of coming during the rainy season.  There are consequences of coming during the dry season, too.  That’s the popular tourist season.  It gets much more crowded and rates for everything go up.

I was told the Toucan is common at Rincón de la Vieja but I didn’t see one.  I did see and tried to photograph a Blue-Crowned Motmot.  It, however, landed on a branch far enough away that I had to use the longest lens I had and it was just too dark to hold a lens that long still enough at the slow shutter speed I had to use.  I got a number of pictures that were too blurry to be of any use except to show to a park ranger as I left.  She was able to recognize and identify the bird for me.  I hyperlinked the name of the bird to an identifiable picture so you can see what it looked like.  It was certainly impressive.

Most of my stops were at different sites of geothermal activity and there are pictures of those areas.  The waterfall is seasonal and only exists in the rainy season so I guess that was my reward for slogging through all that mud.  Somehow it seems to get everywhere.  Laundry is on my agenda for tomorrow.

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Swinging Bridge   Comments!	Rio Colorado	Not a Muddy Creek - This is the Trail	Geothermal Steam in the Distance
Fumarole Lagoon	Geothermal Steam	Water Pots	Mud Pots
River Crossing   Comments!	Trail	Volcancito   Comments!	Mossy Tree Branch
Fumarole	Waterfall   Comments!	Waterfall   Comments!	Tree Fungus
Strangler Fig

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