Hiking the Costa Rican Tropical Rain Forest by Benjamin Ergas
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Less than 1 percent of the light that hits the rainforest canopy reaches the forest floor.
Trees and bushes elbow one another to catch a glimpse of light. Epiphytes leash up along tree trunks to reach new heights, grasp for a hint of brightness. Broad-leaved plants grow elliptically to optimize sun exposure. All species around us have endured the test of time, become the forest’s best competitors. Out of necessity, they have adapted - and survived.
We are halfway done hiking 120 feet below the thick canopy of Costa Rica’s southern rainforest in the Osa Peninsula - one of the country’s most remote and biologically rich regions. A day earlier, we had landed with a 4-seater Cessna plane in Puerto Jimenez, a harbour settled by Panaman political outlaws, now a village of two-thousand inhabitants. and the gateway to Corcovado National Park, the largest patch of virgin lowland tropical rainforest in Central America. Following a 45-minute truck ride on a rugged road, we arrive at the camp. The rainforest seems untouched. I wonder how much it has changed since Spanish caballeros first came here in the early 16th century.
It is midday. The heat is sweltering, the humidity close to 90 percent and our T-shirts soaked. Water and camera in our bags, sandwiches wrapped up in plastic bags to avoid unwanted trespassing, we walk in line behind Danielo, our rainforest guide. Our decision to use hiking shoes over rubber boots, recommended by Danielo because of the muddy ground (this is the rainy season), proves to be wise given the long trek… Pushing on through the foliage, eyes wide open, we observe, we listen.
We hear ourselves hiking on the forest floor, stepping on dead leaves, woody vines, and all kinds of fungi and insects. It is quiet, if not for the brisk rustling of leaves marking the passing of a lizard… or at times, piercing through the air with singular resonance and regularity, a birdsong, or the loud racket of a tiny frog.
The tropical silence is suddenly broken by a deep howl echoing through the forest. High above our heads, we see branches moving about, and then, there it is, a spider monkey, then another, and then a third, monkeys putting on a show, jumping from tree to tree with grace and gravity-defying agility, relying on slender legs and disproportionately long tails to catch themselves. As they pause in the foliage, we zoom in and photograph their silhouettes against the sky, beyond the canopy. These monkeys turn out to be our most common photography subjects over the course of the trip: they appear often (we encountered half a dozen per day), are big enough (two feet long) and take time to rest.
Visibility is good, to my surprise. I had imagined the rainforest to be impenetrable, as depicted in Henri Rousseau’s 19th-century surrealist paintings. Since trees are tall here, with very few branches growing below the canopy, we can see 100 yards through the forest. I do learn from our guide that secondary forests, which spring up when primary forests are cut down, tend to be a lot less open and airy.
In the forest, the fight for food is just as manifest as the fight for light. I am struck by the shallow root systems criss-crossing our trail, signs of vigorous attempts by trees to absorb as many nutrients as possible on the soil surface. Thick roots spread far away from their sources, streaming along the forest floor like veins under my skin. Fewer than 1/10 of 1% of forest nutrients penetrate the first 5cm of rainforest soil, as heavy rain and high temperatures accelerate chemical decomposition: yet again, it is a matter of survival for trees to adjust and fine-tune their dispositions.
In the fight for life here, plants and insects are the most visible protagonists. Birds are no where in sight as they fly high above in the canopy, and there are no large mammals as in the open plains of the African savannah – it is just too dense in here.
Amphibians, ants and other insects join forces with trees to survive. Their reliance on one another is fascinating. One of the excitements earlier in the day had come from the ground, where Danielo had detected a frog, motionless and silent. Its body was lost in the leaves, a master of disguise barely visible to the human eye. Earlier on the beach, I had also taken photos of crabs with carapaces whose colour perfectly matched that of the rocks.
Tired and humbled, we complete our hike and come back to Lapa Rios. Some of us decide to relax in hammocks overlooking the lush forest stretching for miles towards the Golfo Dulce bay, or ride to deserted beaches nearby on horses like caballeros of the day. I choose to climb up the camp’s 50-feet high observation tower to take a peek at life in the canopy. Over 300 birds have been registered in the area. Awkwardly holding my binoculars, I am of course looking in the wrong place. A more seasoned birdwatcher on the deck guides my eyes to particular fruit trees that look appealing for birds… and sure enough, a number of them make their entrance on stage, some announcing themselves with raucous calls, others calmly coming in from other trees. My fellow expert rattles off their names from a book: black-stripped sparrows, great-tailed grackle, clay-colored robin, royal terns. Later that day, I would see a classic keel-billed toucan, one of the most colorful birds out here (with the Resplendent Quetzal, which is extremely rare). This ecosystem is mostly beyond my grip, but I am thrilled.
The wealth of Costa Rica truly is its biodiversity. Marching in the forest, I was not expecting to run into towering pyramids such as the Mayan ones that I had seen years earlier in the Yucatan. Pre-Columbian ruins and artifacts are scarce here, and so are traces of Spanish colonization: because it was the farthest away region from the HQ of 18th-century colonial governors in Guatemala, had only limited amount of gold and few Indians available to work in the haciendas, Costa Rica was left alone… to our advantage.
Costa Rica was at the center of a great faunal and floral interchange that took place when the Northern and Southern continents joined one another 3-5 million years ago. It is a biological hybrid, a wilderness refuge that hosts 0.03 percent of the world's territory yet 6 percent of its plant and animal life! 134 kinds of frogs, 850 species of birds, 74 types of lizards, 131 different snakes, 560 distinct butterflies and hundreds of other mammals making a living across lowland rainforest and cloud forests, tropical lakes and rivers. You would hear rather than see most of them, but in the course of our hike alone, we spotted 4 types of monkeys (spider, white-faced, squirrel and howlers), keel-billed toucans, a scarlet macaw, butterflies, lizards, beetles, spiders and army ants (the same ants, as an aside, whose jaws were used by Indians to clamp flesh together and suture wounds…).
This environment is however fragile, and requires pro-active efforts to preserve it. The deforestation has reduced rainforest’s footprint as a percent of total suitable land from 55 percent to 35 percent. Cutting down trees provide locals with lumber, pasture and farm land but overtime disrupts the ecosystem, leading to extinction of rare species. Preservation efforts include: 1) government policies designed to protect land through national parks and biological reserves (27 percent of land in Costa Rica is protected) and 2) private initiatives, such as the Lapa Rios eco-lodge, a private nature reserve on 1,000 acres of land in the Osa Peninsula, purchased by a couple from Minnesota. Bungalows there were built in the forest canopy with minimum damage to the environment (no trees were cut), and local people are employed and educated as staff-members, to facilitate the community’s transition from logging and hunting to servicing the eco-tourism industry.
Prior to my trip I, like most people, was generally sensitive to ecological issues, and supportive of protection efforts. However, my experience in the Costa Rican’s rainforest in the Osa Peninsula really helped deepen my awareness as to 1) how astonishingly rich biodiversity really is, 2) the role that biodiversity fulfils as rainforests cover less than 6% of the Earth’s land surface, yet host more than half of all the world's plant and animal species and produce 40% of the Earth's oxygen, 3) how fragile this kind of ecosystem is, and 4) yet the kind of positive impact that preservation projects such as Lapa Rios can have on its sustainability. And thus, I encourage all to experience biodiversity first hand , and perhaps start with this tiny stretch of virgin land in Central America.