Born and bred in Tortuguero, Ray Brown is a bit of a character. His father was from one of the original sixteen families who settled in the little fishing village and from the Second World War onwards Papa Brown became the unofficial ‘midwife’, delivering hundreds of babies through the decades. The nearest proper medical care to the village was a three day journey away so Papa Brown became the de facto health ‘professional’, using the jungle plants as his medicine, and instructing his son in the same. 

We learn all these details from Ray, our local guide who docks at Miss Junie’s at 8am for our boat ride into Tortuguero National park. His life history, which is delivered in a well-rehearsed patter, provides justification for him to include botany and plant species as part of our exploration of the jungle and waterways. It’s a useful spiel as during our three hot hours crammed onto his boat, with diesel fumes enveloping Coman, Mark and myself at the back, we see a lot more trees than wildlife. 

His knowledge is extensive but it does mean we frequently spend a lot more time being tutored than actually exploring the farther reaches of the park as we expected. The lagoon waters are brackish, due to the meeting of salt water from the Caribbean into the freshwater of the Rio Tortuguero, so Ray tells us that sharks, barracudas, dolphins, manatees and turtles all populate the area, but they remain unseen by us all.  

However in addition to the mahogany, almond, mimosa and blood-sap trees Ray identifies, along with royal palm and camphor plants amongst many others, we do sail past caimans, crocodiles, black river turtles, blue herons and northern jacana birds. In the trees Ray spots iguanas, howler monkeys, a boat-billed night heron, neo-tropical cormorants, a green ibis and various butterflies.

This cornucopia of nature is lovely but his constant talking combined with having to negotiate around other boats of tourists, plus the blazing sun, lack of breakfast and slowly intoxicating emissions from the engine mean that we’re thankful when the tour comes to an end. 

Back on dry land we go for brunch with Nicole, Mark, Tracy and Jennifer before relaxing a little by Miss Junie’s brand new pool. While the Caribbean beach is only twenty metres from the lodge’s garden gates, we’ve been warned in no uncertain terms not to swim in the sea. Not only is it extremely rough on these shores, but great white sharks are known to swim in these parts. We’ll happily leave them to it and dip in the pool instead. 

After a couple of hours we go for a walk in the park with Jonathan, exploring some of its land-based wonders instead. While thirteen of Costa Rica’s sixteen endangered mammals live in the park, we don’t see the likes of jaguars and ocelots 

Armed with binoculars and craning necks we see a variety of tropical insects and some of the 300 bird species in Tortuguero including keel-billed rainbow toucans, along with brown spider monkeys and, to much excitement from a number of women in our group, a three-toed sloth carrying a baby, hidden high in the tree canopy. 

We walk back to the lodge along the somewhat desolate black sand beach. The crashing waves have littered the beach with debris from trees that have fallen down, all sorts of vegetation and quite a bit of plastic and glass rubbish. Jonathan tells us that this will all soon be cleared away by volunteers to prepare the beach once more for turtle season, where huge shoals of green turtles will come ashore and lay their eggs in the sand to hatch a few weeks later. Hawksbill, leatherback and loggerhead turtles also nest within the park. In amongst the debris strewn along the surf-lashed shore we find empty turtle eggs, the remnants of the last hatching events. 

That evening we venture along Tortuguero’s street once more for dinner at Restaurante Mi Niño and the air is humid and sticky, thick with the whirring sound of insects and rich with smells of lush greenery. And during the night thunderous rain is unleashed once more meaning when we all gather on the boat next morning to return to La Pavona we’ve all had disturbed sleep. 

It’s compounded by another torrential downpour as we chug along the waterways and to protect ourselves and the luggage we are instructed to pull down the plastic sheeting to secure the sides of the boat, creating an unpleasant greenhouse effect within the humid bubble we’re now enclosed in. It all becomes too much for Janet in our party, travelling from Denver, Colorado with her husband Alan. She’s sat across the tiny aisle from me and suddenly exclaims, “I feel weird,” before turning white and passing out. 

I shout to Jonathan that there’s a medical emergency, and the boat’s engine is cut. There’s a worrying 60 seconds whilst Janet is completely unconscious and we try to get her some air, but thankfully she finally gasps back to consciousness. We hold the bottom of the sheets away from the boat to try and circulate some oxygen around, but the rain is still hammering down while the river waters surge under our little boat. 

Eventually the rains ease up and we get to dry land safely, hauling our luggage up muddy river banks to our waiting vehicle. It’s been a dramatic couple of hours but once Janet is ready to continue our journey we set off cross country for an unexpected and eye-opening experience in a rural community.