Drake Bay coastal walk

One of the nice things about Drake Bay is that there is a great walk all along the coastline. It passes through the edge of the jungle and dips in and out of lovely beaches. You can just walk out of town and keep going! Eventually it ends up at the edge of Corcovado National Park.

Our plan was to walk along the trail looking for wildlife, until we decided it was time to turn around! Yes, simple plans are the best! 🙂 Even simple plans though have their flaws…. as we set out from town it started to rain quite heavily – so we went back inside! No point in getting wet for no reason 🙂 Also it’s hard to take photos of nice animals when it’s raining!

The rain didn’t last long though, and we were soon on our way again. The walk goes past a fancy hotel complex on the edge of town, and then after that it passes an occasional resort or campground. There was plenty of jungle and beach bits in between, and it wasn’t very crowded at all – it turned out to be a really great walk! 🙂

The walk starts out along the beach at Drake Bay.
Looking back along the beach towards ‘town’.
PB enters the jungle.
A sign helpfully marks the way.
CC finds some bamboo.
Signs marking the destinations along the way.
There were plenty of lizards along the way!
Trail through the jungle.
There were also plenty of little creek crossings…

Our first signs of wildlife were actually in the area near the big hotel complex, where some noisy howler monkeys were hanging out.

Mantled howler monkey hiding in the trees.

One of the main things that we wanted to see on this walk was the common basilisk – that may not seem very interesting at first, but it’s better know as the Jesus Christ lizard – yes, now you are interested! 🙂 This lizard is slightly famous as it can walk on water!

It runs on its hind legs and has large feet with flaps of skin that help it run on the water for small amounts of time. They look really cool when they run! 🙂 We managed to see quite a few, but disappointingly they were always running on sand and not across the water – but I guess that’s better than nothing! 🙂 They were very hard to get photos of, as they ran away very fast when you got near them – but I guess at least you can see them running when they do that!

Here is our friend the Jesus Christ lizard. This is a female – the females don’t have the crests on their head.
Here is one running across the beach.
The trail continues.
Area of beach along the trail.
PB back in the jungle.
More beach scenery.
Some bird action. This is a female golden-naped woodpecker.
Back on the beach.
Check out the crest on the male Jesus Christ lizard.
Another female basilisk.
The trail continues.
The trail has empty beach after empty beach.
Some more monkey action. We found a palm tree full of capuchin monkeys.
Capuchin monkey hanging out in a palm tree.
More rocky coast.
CC on the walk.

Between the scenery, the lizards, and the monkeys – this turned out to be a highly enjoyable walk indeed!

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