Van Life Costa Rica | Whale Watching & Tortuguero (Most Remote Village)

We're Tani and Adam and we've spent the last two and a half years living full-time in Jitters, our rusty, trusty-ish camper van. Having just braved three months of snow in Europe, filming our winter series, we escaped to the sun with our friends to do... In this episode, we get dangerously close to some crocs, visit a wonderful animal sanctuary and go to one of the most remote villages in Costa Rica. If you haven't already, it would mean a lot to us if you subscribed to follow along on our journey of full-time travel. This is part two of our three-part Costa Rica series. After a morning coffee and watching the early surfers, Eric and Lisa visited a waterfall while we were invited to a very special animal sanctuary. We are so excited because we have just arrived to Alturas Wildlife Sanctuary. So they rescue wild animals and then release them back into the wild. But some of them aren't able to be released because they wouldn't survive in the wild. So they live out the rest of their days here in the little sanctuary being looked after by the volunteers. So we're really excited to go and have a little look and see what it's like. Alturas Wildlife Sanctuary is a non-profit organization dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and release of wildlife in Costa Rica. They do truly amazing work and in 2021 they helped over 2,000 animals get back to health and out in the wild where they belong. We were invited to the sanctuary by JIT subscribers Betty and Paul who make a part of the team of volunteers that help care for the animals. We arrived just as the anteaters were being taken for their morning walk so we tagged along. Bridget's back legs are paralyzed. A sanctuary volunteer makes her onesies so her legs don't get injured when she drives them along behind her. Before meeting the rest of the residents I had to make sure I was dressed appropriately. Volunteer manager Christina introduced us to the animals and shared some of the stories on how they ended up at the sanctuary. Whereas a lot of the animals have been injured in the wild or abandoned by their mothers, others have been victims of human ignorance and greed. People wanting wildlife as pets because they're so beautiful or cute, robbing them of the life they were supposed to have. It was feeding time for Florcita, the resident sloth. She has an injured back leg and can't navigate climbing in the wild. The sanctuary is worth a visit for Florcita alone. It's a guaranteed close-up sighting of one of Costa Rica's most famous animals. Some of the sanctuary residents often have visitors from the surrounding jungle which is a reminder that while it's fascinating to see these amazing animals up close and however well looked after and loved they are, they don't belong in cages, they belong in the wild. What an amazing day it's been. It has been so incredible to get so close to all these amazing animals but it's also, it's quite sad because of course they're all in cages and that's not their natural environment and all of them have individual stories of how they ended up here and why they're still here because quite a lot of the ones that we've seen around here they're not going to be able to be rewilded because they wouldn't survive in the wild which is really sad but it's amazing to know that there are sanctuaries like this out there and something that we learned is that not all sanctuaries are created equal at all. Yeah definitely like for example in this sanctuary you're not allowed to feed the animals or take selfies with animals or touch the animals unless you're an actual volunteer so they really love and care and respect the animals. Yeah it's all about the respect for the animals and although if they would to let them people stroke sloths obviously they get hundreds of visitors and make loads of money but it's not the point the point is looking after the animals. So yeah that's a red flag if ever you're going to a sanctuary anywhere around the world and they let you touch the animals then just remember that that's not good for the animals. You can support this sanctuary because it's such a great sanctuary you can come here you can do the tours which is still amazing even though you're not allowed to touch the animals you still get to really see them and it is beautiful and you learn their stories and you learn their stories or you can just donate just send a one-off donation so we will of course leave a link down below in the description box because it would mean so much to us if you could if there's anything you can spare then you could donate to help them out it'd be amazing. As we made our way to Marina Vellino National Park we didn't know it but this was going to be one of the best days of our whole trip. So we have to be really careful because all around us crocodiles live here so do not feed the crocodiles a little bit of a reminder. But crocodiles weren't why we were here we were going whale watching. After a quick demo on how to open a coconut from our guide Geraldo we walked to the boat. Yay! So guys life jackets on we're off to hunt for some whales. The last time we did this was in Iceland and it was a little disappointing because we didn't actually get to see them fully breach so fingers crossed that this time will be a better viewing but again they can't guarantee it because it's the end of the whale season now but yeah fingers crossed exciting i feel we're gonna be lucky today yeah we're gonna be like i'm feeling lucky let's go find some whales so it's all really stale at the moment because they think that we just spotted a whale somewhere here is a whale we were lucky almost immediately we found ourselves sailing alongside a humpback whale she rose to the surface approximately every 10 minutes before diving but she seemed a bit camera shy only showing us a little bit of her back but as time went on she began to show more and we saw her tail just as we were leaving she caught us by surprise with a massive jump and while we saw it with our eyes we were too late to film it adam just caught the aftermath of the splash however somehow eric managed to get the money shot on his phone after the whale watching we went for a quick swim in the beautiful clear water before cruising back along the coastline so guys oh bugs so guys we have seen the whales we've just finished the tour it was unbelievable it was such a good experience i think for us it was quite a lot better than the iceland tour that we did because the boat was smaller we saw a lot more whales the guide was just great he kept showing us all these amazing things he's been doing this for 14 years and he you could still feel the passion yeah snorkeling um and they also gave you fruit as well yeah it's just like amazing it's such good value for money so if you guys are coming here and thinking about doing it definitely go with those guys because they are they smashed it yeah we'll put a link in the description yeah it was amazing have you ever seen whales and if so what's the best place in the world that you have seen whales let us know in the comments because we still want to go and find whales because we didn't quite get the money shot so we need to go again yeah we need to see like the tail and the flip we want to see them jumping all the way out of the water and get that on camera Geraldo then showed us some baby crocs but the mom was lurking so we didn't stay long Geraldo thought it was funny to call the crocodiles fast forward 10 minutes and we were all in the car together on the way to a waterfall as Geraldo was telling us of a story of a man being killed by a crocodile a week ago one guy here in south in the south of costa rica he cut like how do you say like after the guard dog gave us the all clear we headed down through the jungle towards the hidden waterfall this is so cool we're getting like this private tour and Geraldo is taking us through this private property he has a friend who we just pay 1000 colones to and he's taking us to this waterfall that only locals really know about so very exciting very exciting this is amazing guys you can never get tired of walking through the jungle every jungle we've been in so far is different and just listen to that noise all right yeah it's great isn't it yeah just yeah tanya has a habit of twisting her ankle don't want that to happen in the middle of the jungle but yeah this is just amazing honestly jungle and beach that's what costa rica is all about true adventure here we are guys absolutely stunning spot so worth it and we are sweating and apparently this water is very cool so it's going to be absolutely welcomed when we get in let's go on our way out the guard dog checked that we enjoyed ourselves and Geraldo had one more surprise of his sleeve that's the biggest tree i've ever seen so we just stopped off on the way back to see the biggest tree that i have ever seen you can't even see the top of it just disappears look so huge we then all enjoyed a beach sunset the next morning we had a slow start we had breakfast from a food truck just next to our park up and louise the owner gave us much more than we had bargained for so louise has just challenged me to taste the hottest the spiciest chili sauce there is in the world according to louise no in the world it's called carolina ripper rippers like grim reaper okay is that spicy even for you tanya loves spice you're not finishing it so apparently the people that make this sauce whether it's true or not have said that as soon as it hits your stomach it will go into your veins and help your heart and how is it too hot was it really really hot it's very very hot is it the spiciest thing you've i of course had to have some on my burrito but not too much one drop is all it takes to blow your head off when you live life on the road everything can move so fast sometimes we enjoy days like these when we take everything a bit slower we spent our time at the park up enjoyed a coconut and filmed a van tour which is coming soon we left our beach spot and made our way towards a small village tortuguero accessible only by boat or plane the village makes up part of the tortuguero national park which despite being so remote is one of costa rica's most visited parks as the name would suggest it's a great place to see turtles unfortunately we were visiting outside of turtle season but there were plenty of other things to see we settled into our hostel ready for an early morning it's very early in the morning and we're going off to try to spot some caimans and some other nature out in the swamps take your time you good more you see this morning more breakfast you will have less you see less breakfast if you see nothing no breakfast and we agree yes we agree and we like our food so we have to see a lot as we paddled out down the lagoon through the jungle it was clear we were going to see a lot of wildlife there were so many different kinds of birds this is a snake bird it looks like he's being aggressive or doing a mating call but this is actually how he dries his wings after swimming we also got quite close to some spiders and then we saw a caiman he didn't seem bothered by a presence at all we were very close that's so cool and that's how people used to communicate that you used to communicate when people used to go hunting in the forest long time ago when they up in small groups into the forest they make different sound to keep in communication with each other's later that day we took a walk in the endless jungle neighboring the village i have my glasses on again guys because we are out here spotting animals wildlife we didn't take a guide so we didn't see as many animals as we might have otherwise but we were sure they were watching us and we did get to see this guy relaxing in the tree after walking through the jungle we walked back along the never-ending beach this place is incredible i was just thinking the last time that we were in a place with black sand was in iceland and there was icebergs in the sea and now there's palm trees very different and it's t-shirt weather and it's tropical it's amazing and apparently a jaguar lives here he just strolls around loads of jaguars i think there's like 40 of them live around here we left together getting stuck in the mud on our way out we said goodbye to eric and lisa before moving into a four by four camper join us next time as we find one of the best wild camping spots we've ever stayed at i just wanted to show you this just in case you need any more convincing about why we decided to come back to this beach we're parked up just here and this is our view