The first time I saw the Maquenque Mixed Wildlife Refuge on Google Earth, I was truly surprised by the sheer number of lagoons and wetlands that could be easily observed, I got curious, so then I read that it had the Ramsar designation because of the ecological importance of the wetlands. I also learned that there were serious attempts to declare it a National Park, but still with no success.
Soon, I convinced my good friend and passionate explorer to try to conquer a hidden lagoon in the Wildlife Refuge, it was very close to the natural border with Nicaragua which is the grand River San Juan. We first studied the satellite map and discussed possible routes to enter the lake, once we were there we would improvise and make our way through. When the sun raised, we took the infamous “Trocha” to get to our adventure destination; we planned to enter with 2 kayaks on a 4WD truck, this was the only way we could carry our gear into the lake. We arrived at a private farm, which did not have a any sort of road or official entrance, so we took the path the cattle transit, after lots of mud and fearless driving, we finally made it to the lake.
This whole expedition was planned with the intention of reaching the Jaguar House Reserve, our main idea was to explore the canals that branch in to the tropical jungle because we knew some big animals were crossing by, we were told by locals that huge Tapirs and elusive Jaguars were using these canals as paths throughout the wetlands, we were intrigued by this fact.
Once we went into the lake we realized that there is no cellphone signal, luckily for us, we carried a GPS receptor, there was no way to communicate with the outside, although this was a rare feeling, it felt somewhat good to disconnect of the constant chaos of the modern world, we were there, in the middle of the lake, to the mercy of an astonishing jungle of 50 thousand hectares.
We had planned to exit the lagoon by 2:00 p.m. so we could have some extra time before sundown, just in case anything went wrong. It was beautiful, vey dense vegetation all around us, the lake was flat, it was like a stained mirror glass. We were amazed by the incredible amount of different bird species that thrived around the lake, monkeys also showed up and they seemed to enjoy our company.
We explored around, and went in to the canals, the more we went in, the narrower the canal was, at one point, my adventure companion decided to fish for a while, he only brought a couple of hooks and a few worms to try his luck, he assured me that he would fish something, I don’t think he was sure of what, but he was to enthusiastic to tell him that the lake mainly “Guapote”, a gorgeous and tasty fish, but very smart and hard to catch, I continued without him. I was a hard path, nothing close to sailing through the canals of Venice, I had to go over fallen trees, water plants and for the worst (or best, still no sure) it started raining strong, this was my signal to go back, besides our time in the lake was coming to an end, we had to get back to camp, where our local host was expecting us with some delicious Costa Rican lunch.
I got back to the point where my buddy was trying his luck, to my amazement he had fished a beautiful 1 Kg Guapote! I told him to let it go, but his plan was to take it to the camp, this fish meat was really appreciated by the locals; he even joked about how the fish was the protein we needed to survive through the night if we got lost.
As we made our way back to the exit point, rain suddenly stopped, we kept on paddling for a while, until a big and annoying gadfly started to bother us, because we were limited on space and moving, the nasty fly had an advantage, it kept biting us until exhaustion, we kept as calmed as we could and then it just suddenly disappeared, we got together to discuss about our way back, none of us was really sure if we were taking the right path to get out. I was calmed about it, because I had my GPS, but after several attempts, there was not a clear signal, because of how dense the forest was, massive 50-meter trees around us were making interference with the GPS, our savior was gone. We soon realized that we were lost, we were in a place we couldn’t recognize, we were lost.
It was getting late; we were already 2 hours past our exit time, we were tired and hungry, my friend managed to roll one of his British tobaccos while he was now really considering to make some Costa Rican sashimi with the fish, it made him think clear he said. There where so many canals, and everything was so alike, we couldn’t really trust our memory to get out, and the mirror effect of the lake was really playing a mind game on us, plus there were this water-plant islands that where moving around the lake, just pushed by the wind, this didn’t help at all in our attempt to make some sense of how everything went wrong so quickly. We gathered the kayaks and put our minds in to our next move, we had already failed several times, this was physically expensive as we were running out of energy and patience.
Rain started pouring down again, and even though we were both equiped with waterproof clothing, nothing can really stop you from getting wet in the tropical rainforest, we decided to make one last attemp, if we failed, we had to stay the night in the lake. We trusted our instinct, and paddled as strong as we could towards what seemed to be a clear area out in the distance, we were right, our patience and planning paid off, we finally got safe and sound to the exit point, what a relief. We got to back to the camp late and exhausted, the locals were worried and were already planning what they called a “rescue mission” for us. Besides the fact that we got lost, we were happy, our expedition was a success, we were able to map the area, studied the ecology of the zone and we had a great story to tell our grandchildren.
We never returned to that lagoon, but we are sure that there still many secrets waiting to be discovered in the hidden treasure of Costa Rica: Maquenque.
Jaguar House is a reserve owned by Reserva Natural Maquenque, it is said it’s the heart of the Mixed Refuge; after Hurricane Otto the roads were destroyed and lost, only on scheduled expeditions the area can be visited.
Thanks Chester and Marta for being part of this story.
Raúl Araya Badilla
Director Reserva Natural Maquenque
