What It’s Like to Finally See a Jaguar in the Wild in Costa Rica

A few months ago, I was preparing to take a group of people out on a tour to review camera traps. As I fiddled with my backpack and waited for the guests to gather, a middle-aged gentleman greeted me. I thought he was there for the tour, but it turned out he was a professional photographer taking some time after a nearby gig to photograph wildlife in the protected area where I have my cameras.

We chatted for a while and when I asked if he’d seen anything interesting, he told me that the previous day he was on one of the trails focused on taking a picture of a spiderweb and when he turned around, there was a jaguar looking at him from down the trail.

Now I’m not proud of this, but my immediate, internal reaction was jealousy. This guy spends all of two days in the forest where I’ve dedicated tons of my own time and he gets to see a jaguar and I don’t? Then he went on to explain his theory… that he felt the sighting had been earned by him spending day after day of his life attempting to see wildlife and coming up empty. He thought he’d finally been rewarded for his overall effort. His wonderful theory immediately made me feel worse about my secret jealousy.

Then, just a few weeks ago, I was leading another group of wildlife enthusiasts on a camera trap tour on the same property when we were met by two folks walking the opposite direction on the trail. They stopped me and with eyes widened by excitement proclaimed that they had just seen a jaguar drinking from the small lake my group and I were approaching. I encouraged my group to be nice and quiet as we neared the lake, but no jaguars presented themselves at the water’s edge. Now that’s two more people getting to see the jaguars that I’ve only seen on the videos recorded by my cameras. This is ridiculous.

Fast forward to today (When I’m typing this, not when you’re reading it.). I picked up my friend and fisheries research scientist, Dr. Christopher Bunt, of underwater camera trap fame, from the airport, stocked up on food, and delivered him safely to the bunkhouse of the protected area where everybody gets to see jaguars but me. After he was all settled in, we decided to drive into the forest to have a nice refreshment on the edge of a cliff that becomes a waterfall during rainy season.

As we left the truck and approached the cliff’s edge, I told Chris that each time I peer over the cliff, I harbor a secret hope of seeing a jaguar sipping from one of the pools of water below. We stood for a moment and appreciated the very pretty but jaguarless view before retreating to the nearby forest to sit and chat in the shade. After catching up for an hour or so, it was time for me to get back home, so we started back toward the truck.

I told Chris to stop at the cliff one more time to look for jaguars, knowing of course that we wouldn’t see one. As I turned to keep going to the truck, Chris yells “Jaguar!” I looked at him, thinking he was pulling my leg, but the excitement in his face made me look in the direction he was looking and for a grand total of one second, I saw a real life, wild jaguar. I caught a glimpse of it bounding from a large rock and landing behind some bushes.

We stood there looking at each other in amazement. I thought to myself ‘You did it! You finally saw a jaguar! Though… it was only for a second. I bet those other people saw their jaguars for longer.’ Maybe I can’t be pleased.

Since my jaguar encounter was quite brief, there was no time to photograph or record anything, so in the video below I present several recent jaguar videos from the same property. It’s very possible one of these clips features the jaguar that Chris and I saw.