T A B L E_T A L K New York stories: Share yours in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Running with the bulls By Andrew Taber Horny tradition: Dodging pissed-off bovines in southern France (04/20/98) Road Warrior By Brent Gregston Frankfurt: Where to eat, stay and play (04/17/98) Mondo Weirdo An unforgettable introduction to Beijing (04/16/98) On Guatemala's Gringo Circuit By Doug Fine Volcanoes, videos and voluptuous backpackers (04/15/98) The best little pizzerias in Naples By David Downie Where to savor Italy's best pizza (04/14/98) Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Feature archives		Seduced and sated in Costa Rica From morphos and macaws to coatimundi and poison-arrow frogs, this tiny Central American country offers a mind-altering overabundance of wildlife. BY J. KINGSTON PIERCE "See what he's doing over there?" It takes me a moment to realize that Mario Olmos, our faithful guide through the rain forests of western Costa Rica, is pointing a finger in my direction. And even then, I'm too busy to contemplate why I should suddenly be so interesting. After more than an hour of slogging through humid jungle, beneath a foliage canopy so dense that it blocks out all but the most tenacious of the sun's rays, I am finally enjoying a moment's rest, leaning against a skinny tree while I frantically suck every last molecule of moisture from my too-small canteen. "He's obviously never heard of poison-arrow frogs," Mario tells the other dozen or so members of our group. "They're often bright in color -- yellow, red, blue. Indians in this area used their deadly poison on the tips of their arrows. And, by the way," he concludes, an arch smile plucking up the corners of his mouth, "they tend to hide beneath the bark of trees around here." Now, I can't truthfully say that I moved faster at this moment than I ever have in my life (that record still belongs to the time I was forced to dodge rapid-fire punches from a justly jealous husband who'd cornered me in an office hallway). But there is certainly no question that were it not for several fellow day-hikers who stood unwittingly in my path, my desperate leap from that tree might have carried me over our trail and nose-first into the forest floor on the opposite side. There's nothing quite like the threat of imminent poisoning in a foreign land to get one's adrenaline pumping ... I'm more than halfway through a seven-day eco-touring cruise along Costa Rica's Pacific edge, one of 60 passengers who departed this country's former pearling port of Puntarenas aboard a small vessel operated by Miami-based Temptress Voyages. And by this time, I am exhausted. Drained by the heat. Compelled to swallow copious quantities of beer and the local firewater, guaro, -- for medicinal purposes only, of course, a hedge against the thorough depletion of my essential bodily fluids. Whoever wrote the slick brochures describing this cruise as "semi-luxurious" must have been inspired by the Lucullan meals that the ship's crew serves three times a day, or by the impromptu nightly parties on the upper lounge deck, or maybe by the ready availability of scuba, fishing and water-skiing equipment. What those pamphlets don't mention is that in order to fully appreciate the arboreal diversity that awaits me during this voyage, I must rise each and every morning at an obscenely early hour. Since the birds and beasts can't sleep in, I'm not allowed to, either. So, each day I roll out of my bed in the dark, hurl myself in the approximate direction of my cabin's shower, then sit down for a breakfast of fried rice and beans and fruit, or just grab a mug of the potent local java, and the next thing I know, I'm sliding from a Zodiac raft into the bracing Pacific surf to follow Mario or one of the ship's other keen-eyed naturalists through some new and steamy forest preserve. Remembering only at the last minute that I have left my bug repellent -- my sole defense against voracious swarms of sand flies (aka no-see-ums) -- behind on my night stand. Uh-oh ... Today we have stopped to study the palm groves and mangrove bogs -- and, of course, the poisonous frogs -- of Corcovado National Park, 75 miles north of the Panama border. Due to its remoteness, Corcovado isn't heavily visited. Yet it is among the most beguiling of this nation's numerous wild parks, inhabited by 116 species of amphibians and reptiles, 139 varieties of mammals and 400 different breeds of birds -- including macaws, those emperors of the air that so vainly display their Day-Glo plumage at every opportunity. Unfortunately, I am no longer capable of appreciating such zoological redundancy. After five days of marches across primeval hill slopes, kayak journeys down languid jungle streams and sea excursions amid ragged battalions of green turtles, I am feeling more than a little bit jaded toward animal sightings. Costa Rica is like some vastly overgrown wildlife theme park, Barnumesque in its agglomeration of exotica. Though it occupies less than .0003 percent of Earth's land area, the country is said to contain around 5 percent of all known species of flora and fauna. Nights here provide a raga of creaturely calls. Walking a jungle trail, you're prone to stumble upon packs of glistening beetles moving like compact oil slicks from one side of a path to the other. Every breeze seems redolent of orchids or tree ferns or just the mustiness of decay that is integral to a rain forest's evolutionary cycle. I had once worried that I might be bored by Costa Rica, because it doesn't possess the abundant pre-Columbian or colonial sites that draw me to Mexico, Guatemala and Peru. Ha! Instead, I find my brain and senses overstimulated by this nation's boundless permutations of nature -- to the point that my initial thrill at listening for the clamorous cackling of toucans at Curú National Wildlife Refuge or watching coatimundi (like large raccoons with panda eye rings) perform death-defying leaps between trees at Manuel Antonio National Park has been replaced by an almost weary expectation of the outlandish, the astonishing, the unbelievable at every turn. Any moment now, I expect some top-hatted huckster to leap out of a fungus patch and announce, "This way to the opera-singing, three-headed jaguar." It wouldn't faze me for a moment. Three-toed sloths? I've already studied more than my share of those torpid tree-huggers here, all of them looking like clumps of moldy gray moss in the high branches. Two-meter-long iguanas? The trick is distinguishing them from their native camouflage; once I have that down, they seem to occupy every other sun-scorched boulder. Black howler monkeys? Despite their imposing size (they may weigh up to 10 pounds), they're not particularly aggressive, and their stentorian roars make them easy to track. And butterflies? Costa Rica boasts 1,100 brilliantly hued species, some patterned like zebras, others metallic gold or orange-striped, and the most sought-after -- the large morphos -- decorating the jungle canopy with flashes of neon blue. Stand almost any place in the Costa Rican outback, and a kaleidoscopic range of these insects is likely to stagger by. But just when I think I've seen everything, Costa Rica tosses a brand new wonder in front of my eyes -- a coiled fer-de-lance, say, one of Central America's most belligerent snakes, with a venom that dissolves nerve tissue and destroys blood cells; or something more benign, like a chartreuse procession of leaf-cutter ants returning to their colony with a day's haul of compost held high over their heads. One afternoon, I spent several hours enraptured simply by the sight of hundreds of soldier crabs methodically dissecting a hamburger lunch left accidentally on a beach, their adopted and polychromatic shells flooding over the meal like Hannibal's army conquering ancient Cannae. N E X T+P A G E | The story of Costa Rica's rain forests