Terrific Travel Tips

Corcovado National Park (Parque Nacional Corcovado) may be known as the Amazon of Costa Rica. For good reason. The little park, only 42,000 hectares (about 100,000 acres) in dimensions, is located on the Osa Peninsula, situated along the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, close to the Panama border.

Most tourists do not realize that Costa Rica got its name from Christopher Columbus who explored the Americas in 1502. He sailed the Caribbean from Mexico south, landed south of what is now Limon, Costa Rica, and named his discovery ‘Costa Rica’ or the ‘rich coast’. We can only imagine what he saw along the way. Spectacular tropical forests covering Central America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Waters teeming with fish, porpoises, and whales. So many sea turtles that seafarers, lost in the fog, found shore simply by listening to the sounds of tens of thousands of animals paddling towards nesting beaches. Alas, the passage of five centuries has not been kind to either the forests or animals and today most of the primary forests from Mexico to South America have been cut down or burned. Fortunately, Costa Rica had the good sense to preserve Corcovado and its primary rainforest.

Columbus never got to Corcovado. The earliest Western explorer to discover it was Sir Frances Drake. He was the sea captain who destroyed the mighty Spanish Armada in 1588 and saved England from Spain. A a small number of years before that courageous feat, he arrived just north of the Osa Peninsula in a stunning place now named after him: Drake Bay. The bay serves as the gateway to Corcovado

Though Corcovado is quite small, just about 20 miles long and 8 miles wide—-less than half the size of New York City, it’s, as National Georgraphic says: the most biologically intense place on the world. Consider the following: There are 400 different species of birds crammed into this teeny place (the 48 States of the continental United States have approximately 900). The largest remaining Latin America population of the spectacular, and ever more rare, scarlet macaws, is still common here. The Corcovado mammal species represent about ten percent of the kinds of mammals to be found in all of the Americas and they exist on just .000101777 percent of the world’s landmass. There are 116 species of reptile and amphibians and 139 different mammals found here. To put this park’s size in context, you could fit it into Yellowstone more than 22 times! Yet, it contains six different kinds of wild cats, including the magnificent jaguar and puma.

Colorful but seriously endangered frogs such as the red-eyed tree frog, poison-arrow frog and the enigmatic glass frog are all found here. And, this reserve is just one of only a handful of sites in Costa Rica where you will see squirrel monkeys. At night, fishing bats literally scoop fish from the rivers.

The tropical beaches of the Osa Peninsula often appear deserted but during nesting season, thousands of green sea turtles, magnificent rare leatherbacks (up to 1,200 pounds), hawksbills and pacific ridleys arrive to nest. Tapirs are very common and are provide a valuable food source for the crocodiles and jaguars inhabiting the park. Jaguars are the largest cat in the Western Hemisphere and, though endangered, their paw prints, and sometimes the animals themselves, are sighted along the muddy trails that surround the Corcovado Lagoon.

This really is tropical rain forest so assume rain , lots of it—200 inches or more a year. The trees, incredible in their diversity, are as tall as any found in the Amazon, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and it is easy to see why the park is often called the Amazon of Costa Rica. The best time to visit is in the dry months from January to April as the park is inundated by torrential rains from April to December.

Vic Krumm writes from spectacular Costa Rica in his popular Costa Rica Vacations website. Visit wonderful Drake Bay.