Ecotourism In Costa Rica: Wild Place Called Corcovado Park
Corcovado National Park (Parque Nacional Corcovado) is known as the Amazon of Costa Rica. For excellent reason. This tiny park, just 42,000 hectares (about 100,000 acres) in dimensions, can be located on the Osa Peninsula, located along the southern Pacific shoreline of Costa Rica, close to the Panama border.
When Christopher Columbus explored the Americas in 1502 he sailed the Caribbean from Mexico south on to a place he called ‘Costa Rica’, the ‘rich coast’. The name stuck. Great tropical forests blanketed the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and there used to be so many marine turtles that at times seafarers, lost in the fog, found land by means of following the sounds of tens of thousands of animals paddling in to nesting beaches. Sorry to say, the passing of 500 years has not been kind to either the forests or animals and these days many of the primary forests from Mexico to South America have been cut down or even burned. Happily, Costa Rica possessed the good sense to conserve Corcovado.
Columbus never saw Corcovado. The first Western explorer to visit it was Sir Frances Drake. He was the sea captain who destroyed the mighty Spanish Armada in 1588 and saved England from Spain. A few years before that brave deed, he landed just north of the Osa Peninsula in an exceedingly beautiful place nowadays named after him: Drake Bay. The bay is often used as the gateway to Corcovado
Although Corcovado is quite small, only about 20 miles long and 8 miles wide—-less than half the size of New York City, it is, as National Georgraphic describes: the most biologically intense place on the globe. Ponder the following: There are 400 different varieties of birds crammed into this tiny, tiny place (the 48 States of the continental United States have approximately 900). The greatest remaining Latin America population of the breathtaking, and increasingly rare, scarlet macaws, is still common here. The Corcovado mammal species make up 10% of the kinds of mammals to be found in all of the Americas and they exist on just .000101777 percent of the earth’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.
If you cannot wait to find frogs (and who does not?) then visiting this national park will be a rare treat. There are species of poison-arrow, glass, and red-eyed tree frogs within its confines. It is one of just a couple of places in Costa Rica to find squirrel monkeys, and visitors are able to watch fishing bats fish skimming the rivers for fish after dark. At one time you could also find the very rare harpy eagle in Corcovado. However, it has not been seen for a number of years and is believed to be extinct in the area.
At Corcovado, there can be found kilometer after kilometer of apparently deserted seashores. I say apparently because these beaches provide nesting grounds for large leatherback titlting the scales at more than half a ton), Pacific Ridley, green and hawksbill marine turtles. Tapirs are abundant and provide food for ferocious jaguars and crocodiles. The footprint of these large cats is regularly seen on the muddy trails around the Corcovado Lagoon and they are also sighted sometimes. Bring your camera and stay alert!
Corcovado is one of the foremost tropical rainforests we know. You will see why it is called the Amazon of Costa Rica since it is as remarkable as any rain forest in Brazil, Indonesia, or Malaysia. Torrential rains fall in the area from April to December so the best time to visit is in the dry months from January to April.
Vic Krumm writes from sunny Costa Rica in his beautiful Costa Rica Vacations website. Visit unique Drake Bay.
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