Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On the fourth night of our trip we sailed to the Osa Peninsula on Costa Rica's Pacific
Coast, one of the most celebrated ecotourist spots in the country, with beaches that qualify
as a slice of paradise. We began the next morning with a wet landing, climbing out of the
Zodiac boats as best we could on the beach. The smell of the sea was as sharp as metal,
pure salt and humidity without an overlay of pollution.
Once on the beach, we had a choice of riding horses or hiking through the jungle.
Horses were waiting for us on the sand. Bill and I chose a morning hike.
The peninsula is in the southwest corner of Costa Rica. It is shaped like a crab's claw,
sheltering the Golfo Dulce to the east, where we had visited a tropical garden the day be-
fore. This time we were traveling around the western side of the peninsula, up the lush Pa-
cific Ocean shoreline with mangroves dripping into the sea and untamed beaches framed
by dense jungles. The foliage was a study in every shade of green and blue. This was the
magnificent Corcovado National Park, which covers nearly half of the Osa Peninsula. Ex-
perts have called it the crown jewel of the Costa Rican park system. Few other spots on
Earth can claim more diverse flora and fauna than Corcovado. The park is home to the
last old-growth rainforests on the Pacific Coast of Central America and naturalists com-
pare it favorably to the Amazon Basin and the deepest forests of Malaysia and Indonesia.
Keeping it that way has not been easy. This is also one of the few areas in Costa Rica
where gold was found, centuries after Christopher Columbus misnamed the country. In-
ternational mining companies bought up much of the land surrounding the park and 'orer-
os,' or gold panhandlers, continued working in the forests, polluting the streams and killing
the wild animals for food. International logging companies were about to clear-cut wide
swaths of the area until Costa Rica named it a national park in 1975, earning then-Pres-
ident Daniel Oduber the Albert Schweitzer Award for preserving the habitat of animals in
the park.
Over the next decades, the government, supported by money and expertise from phil-
anthropies as varied as the Corcovado Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, Catholic Re-
lief Services and the World Wildlife Fund, has tried varying strategies to protect the park.
First, officials created jobs for local Costa Ricans in ecotourism to discourage logging or
gold panhandling. Then they hired more park rangers to make sure poachers and pan-
handlers stayed out. So far, they have saved the hermit crabs, tapirs, jaguars, pumas and
ocelots and the local villagers have been able to prosper from tourism.
As one conservationist said, Costa Rica is a laboratory in ecology, not an “eco-topia.”
After lunch we sailed farther up the coast and landed at San Pedrillo on the northern
tip of the park for our afternoon hike. We climbed a steep, rutted path that wound with
sharp angles up the hills, leading to a waterfall. Sweating, we dove into its shimmering
pool and splashed for half an hour surrounded by rainforest. Sounds perfect and it nearly
was, but this was a group of strangers thrown together, so there were bound to be a few ir-
ritating encounters among us. One passenger monopolized our guide by speaking to him
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