Log for July 23, 1998

By Dave Scott

I will give a brief report on our trip to Cano Negro. Julie, Gwen, Raymonde, James, Clint & I journeyed to Los Chiles (a town in Northwest Costa Rica near Nicaraugua) with two of our host "mothers."

There we boarded a boat with seats for approx. 10 and powered by an outboard motor. Because we were going against the current of this fairly swift and muddy Rio Negro, I'll say that we were going upstream. On the way our "driver" would point out various things--small bright green iquanas, cormorants--much like the large and medium size birds we find in Tidewater Virginia and on Assateague. Some are quite colorful and all seemed to like, when roosting, to have their wings spread as if ready for flight. Also saw crocodiles, white herons and various other colorful birds. In several places we viewed large monkeys sitting or eating leaves from the tree. In one instance we saw a mother and one little one.

If the scale on my map is correct, we traveled almost 18 kilometers to Laguna Cano Negro where we turned and headed back to be refueled. Refueling was simply being approached by another of the outfitters with a similar boat and being passed the "can" of fuel. Don't know how many liters of gasolina, but more than five gallons.

As we reached our "home port" we were asked if we would like to journey down the river to the border with Nicaragua and we did actually get into Nicaraguas waters. Since the river was the home of Crocs, don't think anyone gave any thought making an illegal journey!

Cano Negro is a bit of a misnomer because it is not a trip through a canyon as we know it. It was, however, a grand trip where we did not have to walk.

Clint proceeded to fall asleep and almost fell out of his seat. The entire trip took more than two hours, but I really was not watching the time. We made the trip from Santa Rosa by public bus and returned to S.R. by taxi. Good trip under about the clearest skies of the week. Luego, Dave