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The dance of the whales off the coast

The boat rocks in the waves, without a leader, the rudder turns left and right.

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The dance of the whales off the coast

The boat rocks in the waves, without a leader, the rudder turns left and right. The captain and the guide seem to have completely forgotten about it. As if hypnotized, they stand at the railing and take cell phone photos, just like the ten tourists who booked this tour. "I've been here for 20 years," says Fernando Guerrero, 59, the guide, "but I've never seen anything like it."

He excitedly watches the group of six humpback whales, five adult bulls, courting for a mate here in Marino Ballena, a marine national park in southern Costa Rica - and putting on a spectacular show. The animals, which can weigh up to 30 tons, bend their backs, spray water up and dive down waving their fins.

When even the guides lose their composure, visitors can be sure that they are experiencing something extraordinary. "Usually you see a mother with her cub in these waters," says Guerrero. “Or a cop looking for a partner. They then appear every ten minutes and quickly disappear. They only come into view so often and so cinematically when they want to impress.”

Fortunately, the humpback forest lady is not easily impressed. And so the 13 to 16 meter long males dance for over an hour next to the boat, which is only half as long, to win their hearts.

Costa Rica's Pacific Coast is ideal for whale watching. The humpback whales of the northern and southern parts of the ocean regularly swim thousands of kilometers into the tropical waters to mate and give birth to offspring.

The best time to see the marine mammals is here: almost always. From mid-December to early March, the North American population from Alaska visits the warm waters of Costa Rica, from mid-July to late October, the whales come from the southern hemisphere and Antarctica.

The 15km stretch of coastline between the town of Uvita and Playa Piñuela is the best spot for whale watching. In 1989 it was declared a marine national park, along with the offshore islands, the first in Latin America. His name says it all: Ballena means whale in Spanish.

Funnily enough, a reef peninsula at the entrance bay, Punta Uvita, has the shape of a whale's tail when viewed from above. "The whales are protected by this 'fin': the sea is safe, shallow and warm here, the perfect nursery for the offspring," explains the guide.

However, there are plenty of bays with warm waters in Central America. There is another important reason why the whales feel so comfortable here: Costa Rica's pioneering work in nature conservation. Since the military was abolished more than 70 years ago, the money saved has flowed into the social and educational system as well as into sustainable environmental projects.

The country has now placed more than a quarter of its area under nature protection. With 51,000 square kilometers, Costa Rica is not much larger than Switzerland. Yet despite covering just 0.03 percent of the Earth's surface, it provides habitat for a staggering five percent of the world's biological species.

This great diversity in a manageable area - in addition to whales, you can also observe many and rare animals on land - makes Costa Rica a top destination for nature vacationers. The pandemic hasn't changed that. For foreign tourists, entry is possible without any problems, round trips with animal observations can be booked with special operators such as Wikinger Reisen or Papaya Tours.

The wild south is particularly worth seeing, also because the region was cut off from the rest of the country for a long time by the high mountains. Where they nestle particularly close to the Pacific, the country is even more original, the jungle even denser, the animal world even more exciting.

"What sound is that? Do they sing?” a French tourist asks the guide. "That's also part of the whales' courtship game," he replies. “They tell each other stories about where they've been throughout the year, what they've experienced. New sounds are added every year.” The male humpback whales sing the longest songs of all animals, sometimes lasting 23 hours.

Thanks to global efforts, humpback whale populations have recovered to the point where the species is no longer considered threatened. The international whaling ban should continue to apply.

Source: The World

Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine how long the five bulls sang today. But after a good hour, just as the boat is turning, one of the bulls jumps particularly high. Shows its white and black striped belly, fins. At the latest, this is the time when everyone knows who has prevailed in the courtship.

Once docked, Guerrero rushes to his office. He works with a network of scientists and wants to share what he saw. While whale behavior is well-studied, he says, amazing things keep happening in special places like this. Recently, a humpback whale even pushed a stranded swimmer back onto shore.

When he came to Uvita two decades ago, Marino Ballena was already a national park, but more on paper. The fishermen regarded the whales as a plague that ate away their catch. She had to convince Guerrero and other animal rights activists that this was a unique place and that whales could bring great prosperity to the region.

It worked: Since the Costa Ballena was connected by a road to the well-developed Quepos, which is about 50 kilometers further west, more tourists have come here. Nevertheless, the area has retained its originality.

From the Hotel Cristal Ballena, which sits enthroned lonely in a unique hilltop location between the Pacific and the mountains, guests have a direct view of the whale bay and the sun, which plops down on them in a fiery red every evening. And you live in one of the best places in the world for bird watching. 200 species have been counted here.

Since the rooms in the twelve-hectare facility are at the height of the treetops, they offer encounters at eye level. Anyone who finds birdwatching boring has never seen toucans fluttering in front of their noses or the yellow-trousered pipra at the mating dance. He walks backwards and performs a kind of moonwalk.

The whales aren't the only dancing animal species here. When their offspring are strong enough, they will begin their journey home, also swimming around the Osa Peninsula - the southernmost and wildest tip of Costa Rica. Your journey can be accompanied here for a bit on the land route.

The approximately 200-kilometer road from the Whale Coast to Corcovado National Park in the heart of Osa is mostly on bumpy gravel roads (four-wheel drive is a must!), but often along the sea. If you're lucky, you'll see a few flashes of black backs along the way.

The shaking trip to the peninsula is definitely worth it. It is not for nothing that the Corcovado National Park was described by the magazine "National Geographic" as "the most biologically intensive place on earth": In hardly any other place in the world is the biodiversity so great in a comparable area.

Among other things, 140 species of mammals, 117 species of amphibians, 40 species of freshwater fish and around 6000 species of insects live in the park. As a good addition to the whale watching tours in Marino Ballena, you can experience the incredible diversity that Costa Rica's nature offers on land and in the air - with spectacular animal encounters that are in no way inferior to the dance of the whales.

The Corcovado encompasses a total of 13 ecosystems, including one of the few remaining pristine tropical rainforests in Central America. The park is home to many endangered species: all four of Costa Rica's monkeys (howler, capuchin, spider and squirrel monkeys) live here, but also coatis, anteaters, sloths, tapirs and even the elusive jaguars and ocelots .

"The most biodiverse place on earth is basically my backyard," jokes Lana Wedmore, founder of Luna Lodge, which is in close proximity to Corcovado National Park. “My guests can go on a six-hour hike through the park with a guide – or just sit in the rocking chair in their bungalow and look up into the tree. The animals don't care about national park borders. They are everywhere."

When the American came here 30 years ago as a hippie girl and set up the lodge a little later, she still had to assert herself against poachers and gold diggers. The Osa Peninsula was in the gold rush for more than 50 years, you could still find the coveted metal in the many rivers, but panning for gold is now forbidden. "You have discovered that the real gold is green," reads a sign in Wedmore's garden.

She has planted 500 trees since her arrival, she says, but hasn't cut a single one. Their eco-lodge was the first accommodation in Costa Rica to be 100 percent hydro-powered. Built on a slope close to the jungle, it seems almost invisible with its eight bungalows and five tents.

In the evening, guests gather on the open restaurant deck with hammocks and sweeping views of the wild Pacific Ocean, home of the whales. Still under the impression of their mighty courtship dance, the vacationers are now contemplating the gentle idyll of the forest. Scarlet macaws, which stay together for life, fly in pairs into the sunset.

Howler monkeys sleep on the tree and gather strength to wake up the whole slope again the next morning at six in King Kong volume. However, one inhabitant hangs unimpressed in the branches: the sloth. Its average speed is 0.1433 kilometers per hour.

The next morning, Lana Wedmore takes her guests to the beach. Then the little olive ridley turtles hatch there again and run towards the sea like wound-up toy animals. At most, three out of every 1,000 of these turtles will make it to adulthood.

But once they are sexually mature, they, like whales, return to their place of birth to have offspring. However, the small turtles do not have the privilege of being introduced to the big wide world by their parents like the whales do. You have to master the short but dangerous way into the floods alone.

No matter how much you want to help them as a spectator, you shouldn't carry newly hatched turtles to the water. Researchers believe that they use the earth's magnetic field to find their way back to their place of birth years later. The route to the sea is important so that the natural GPS in their brain is properly programmed.

They certainly meet in the water on the way to adulthood: the big ones and the little ones, the humpback whales and the baby turtles - 30 tons and 20 grams. Fernando Guerrero was right. Costa Rica's coast is like a kindergarten of nature. And for a person it is unbelievably lucky to be able to take part in it so directly.

Arrival: For example with Iberia or with Lufthansa. 4x4 rentals for the wild south Mapache (mapache.com).

Corona rules: Current information on entering Costa Rica can be found on the website of the Federal Foreign Office: auswaertiges-amt.de

Accommodation: On the whale coast in the "Cristal Ballena Boutique Hotel", double rooms from 151 euros with breakfast (cristal-ballena.com/de).

On the Osa Peninsula in the "Luna Lodge Eco Resort" (lunalodge.com) from 196 euros per night with all meals.

Animal watching: There are exciting whale watching tours at dolphintourcostarica.com, four hours cost around 70 euros. Entry to Corcovado National Park costs around 13 euros (www.sinac.go.cr).

Further information: visitcostarica.com/de

Participation in the trip was supported by the Costa Rica Tourism Board. You can find our standards of transparency and journalistic independence at axelspringer.de/independence.

This article was first published in November 2021.

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