Tortuguero National Park protects 31,187 hectares of lowland rainforest and 52 kilometres of Caribbean coastline where the leatherback, hawksbill and green turtle return each year to nest on black-sand beaches that have remained unchanged for millennia. Established in 1975, the park anchors one of the Western Hemisphere's most important nesting sites, with green turtle arrivals peaking between July and October when thousands of females haul themselves ashore under cover of darkness. The canals that lace the interior — natural waterways widened during the mid-twentieth century to transport timber and bananas — now serve as the park's arteries, accessible only by boat or canoe, and sustain populations of three-toed sloth, caiman, river otter, basilisk lizard and more than 400 recorded bird species including the great green macaw and keel-billed toucan. No paved road reaches Tortuguero village. Visitors depart San José before dawn for a journey that combines highway, river and canal, passing through Braulio Carrillo National Park's cloud forest before descending to the lowland Caribbean plain. The village itself, a ribbon of wooden houses and lodges strung along the main canal, operates on a rhythm dictated by tide and weather. Park headquarters occupy the southern edge of the settlement, where rangers collect the 16.95 USD conservation fee and enforce the daily schedule that limits human presence to morning and afternoon windows, protecting the forest's nocturnal rhythms. The canal system that defines the park experience was engineered by the United Fruit Company in the 1960s to move goods from plantation to port. Today those same channels reveal one of Central America's densest concentrations of wildlife. Canoe tours drift beneath cecropia and raffia palm canopies where howler monkeys call at first light and caimans bask motionless on half-submerged logs. The rowing canoe — silent, human-powered, low to the waterline — allows close approach to herons, anhingas and Jesus Christ lizards that scatter across the surface when startled. Kayak routes navigate narrower tributaries where root systems form cathedral arches and the forest canopy closes overhead. Night tours along the beach require red-filtered torches and strict silence as nesting females excavate egg chambers in the sand, a process that can occupy two hours from emergence to return to the waves.