I grabbed an early bus for todays big adventure to Las Pumas near the town of Cañas.
I caught a bus to the main highway, then standing on the side of the road hailed down the next bus coming along. I asked the driver to drop me off at Las Pumas wildlife refuge.
When I arrived the place was very quiet. I was the only person there aside from a guy on the gate and a lady in the souvenir shop. The place isn’t very big, but I spent over an hour there wandering around. The first thing to grab my attention were the Scarlet Macaws. They were in the cage with your standard sized parrots. These birds are huge, over a metre from head to tail.
I also found some very friendly Toucans, who followed me around as I walked around their cage. This is the closest I’ve been to Toucans although I saw some in Tikal. I’m not sure if they bite but they kept sticking their big beak out through the cage, I was tempted to touch, but didn’t.
Scarlet Macaw
Now I was into the cat section. They had a lot of Margay’s, a smaller wild cat, that is spotted and about the size of a house cat, they were all resting mostly up high in their cages. There was a cage for an Ocelot but he was hiding from me. So was the jaguarundi, another species of small wild cat.
The Pumas however were rather friendly. In fact they came up to the edge of the cage and rubbed their faces along it and purred before lying down. When I moved they followed me. So either they wanted to eat me or for me to feed them, or possibly they like a good scratch…
The jaguars are huge, these ones were bigger than the lions I saw in africa. I got a bit too close taking a photo and the jaguar roared and clawed the cage fence…. Hmm he was upset and or hungry. Best to leave him alone I think. Another Jaguar was moving around and seemed a bit more timid.
Jaguar
On some of the cats you could see the injuries they are here healing from. The place wasn’t huge but the animals they had there caring for were a who’s who of central american wildlife. Now I’m on the hunt to see an armadillo and hopefully see a wild cat in the wild.
I had plenty of time to spare so I headed back to La Fortuna for the night.
Adios.