Tortuguero, a watery tropical paradise?

I'm sitting on the deck of Casa Marbella, on the banks of the Tortuguera ("Place of turtles") River just before it flows through a channel in the barrier bar and out into the Caribbean. The pounding Caribbean surf less than a km away giving the background noise, while here the river flows gently past, the howler monkeys growling at each other from tree to tree. Sometimes the sun shines, sometimes the rain pours down, making this one of the wettest places in the world, with up to 6,400 mm a year. It's a magical tropical paradise, in spite of the evergrowing number of "ecotourists" - like us. A great place to chill out and enjoy nature.

This morning Roberto guided us and 8 other visitors through the narrow channels meandering through the rainforest, silently gliding along in an electric-powered longboat. The water is a millpond, brown with silt and mud, penetrating far into the jungle beneath the tangle of tree trunks and vines at the sides of the channels. Grey herons and giant egrets stand motionless, peering into the depths. Rustling leaves in the towering trees reveal a sloth, white-faced monkeys, an ant-eater. A single cayman, a metre long drifts lazily downstream, a turtle basks on a log. Altogether a magical experience.