Arenal Kayaks Tours on Lake Arenal, Costa Rica

Took a tour in Rainbow Bay a few days ago. Beautiful day. Some clouds, no rain, lake level still up, and a little breeze. Not too far from where we put in, there was a tribe of howler monkeys. Quite a large one, at least a dozen with several little ones on their own or riding on mom's back. Was fun to be right below them floating on the lake and watching them slowly cruise through the canopy, some resting, others eating leaves. After watching for a while we finally decided to paddle on.

I wanted to get back up into the major river that feeds into this large bay. With the water level up to probably this season's peak, there would be much more navigable water to check out. Going as far up the rivers is one of the activities we enjoy on the water so we take every opportunity to explore. This one, however, was a little disappointing.

Not to say that it wasn't worth the effort. Just that it didn't open up all that much extra room. Biggest problem being the foliage that had grown while the level was down for so long. This river was fairly choked off with dead stalks everywhere making passage difficult and ultimately halted progress before the water ran out.

I was the first one in and spotted a tiger egret sitting on one of these dead stalks. He kept an eye on me but let me approach, quietly of course, to about 3m. That's the closest I've been to one. They usually complain loudly when we come near but this one just sat there. He was good enough to turn some so the light hit his feathers showing off spectacular coloring. And the breeze ruffled his feathers a bit adding another perspective. He eventually moved off some but not too far and then finally left when the others caught up.

After that river, we head over to another of the major inlets to the bay. This one is next to the generating plant driven by water from Lake Cote up the mountain a bit. There wasn't as much room to paddle up this river as I'd hoped either but it was a nice place to beach the boats and get out for a hike. Just a short hike up the river to take a look. Pretty nice, lots of rocks so it was possible to walk on them for some of it.

So, on the way back to the put in, I thought we should be looking for that tribe of howlers. I paddled back into a small cove and saw a monkey moving down low and to the right. As I approached, it looked different for some reason. Once I was close enough, I realized that it was a whiteface monkey! This is only the second time we've seen them from the water and there aren't many of them in this area.

Not only was there a tribe of whiteface now but we discovered moments later that the howlers had migrated their way around and were just to the left of us around this small cove. We figured this should be interesting and it was. We found out that whiteface and howlers don't care much for each other.

We could only rarely spot the whiteface and the count of known members was only 4 or 5. But then as the howlers began encroaching on the whiteface territory, the whiteface tribe put up a horrendous chatter. We figured there had to be at least a dozen of them making the tribes more or less equal in size. The sound they made is difficult to describe. Totally different from the barking of the howlers. More like bird chatter but way louder. They performed this tribal warning ritual several times as the howlers attempted to take over their space. Didn't appear the whiteface were interested in giving any of it up.

At some point, we notice a monkey coming up from the rear of the howler tribe. Sure enough, it's a lone whiteface. Figured maybe he'd fallen asleep and didn't realize he'd been overtaken. He had to avoid branches where the howlers sat so his route wasn't as direct as it could've been. But whiteface sure can move through the trees. Faster than someone could cover the same ground running I'm betting.

Well, we left the monkeys to their jungle after watching the show for quite a while. One more Costa Rican adventure.