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| Tour guide Gustavo Gutiérrez
Calvo, points out a deodorant fruit. |
| Photo by Miia Niskanen |
Where is the most likely place in Costa Rica you
will see a jaguar? The Osa. A humpback whale? The
Osa. Scarlet Macaw? The Osa. A near perfect granite
sphere unearthed in a misty forest? The Osa. Osa
means "giant anteater" and you might see
one of these here in the largest coastal rainforest
on the Central American Pacific.
Like any frontier, the Osa seems vast, stretching
away into unknown places. A dark green forest covers
steep hills with views of the blue ocean from the
peaks and ridges reaching to over 2000 feet. Nestled
into massive river swamps and looming, verdant slopes
lies the huge Corcovado National Park as well as the
Osa Indigenous Reserve and several national forests.
Golfo Dulce, the sweet gulf, bathes the East Coast
of the peninsula and the open Pacific pounds the western
beaches. The northwest shelters idyllic Drake Bay,
the northeast holds giant mangrove forests and huge
river mouths, and offshore rises lush Caño
Island.
Accommodations tend to be tent camps or select lodges
that include all meals, as there are no restaurants
or stores on most of the coast. The interior does
not even have accommodations unless you sweet-talk
a hammock in one of the villages that are without
electricity, businesses or roads. There really are
more monkeys than people.
The Osa is a taste of what most of Costa Rica was
twenty years ago, without franchises, pavement or
neon street signs. Except you can now experience the
wilderness with twenty-four hour generators spinning
ceiling fans and ice cream. You can fly back in time
in less than an hour from San José and be worlds
away from civilization, landing at a grass strip in
a cut in the woods to be whisked away to a secluded
paradise. Or travel six or more hours by road and
maybe add on another hour or so by boat.
Two National Parks, Corcovado and Caño Island
bring most tourists to the Osa. Corcovado is the rainforest
of your dreams and imagination. The one with a small
cascading waterfall massaging your shoulders in a
blue pool deep in a lost wood. Where birds of absurd
color call and sing and something furry watches you
from behind palms and enormous dark trunks. A forest
where you can see the levels of the canopy as it contours
to the rolling hills of your gnarled trail. This is
where documentary crews come looking for macaws, jaguars
and tapirs, to name a few.
The park entrances are reached only by hiking or boat
ride. You need a guide, especially if you want a chance
to see the majority of rainforest creatures.
Even if you have ten years, don't expect to see all
the life that resides in the 1000 or so species of
hardwood trees. Scientists speculate that here some
individual rainforest trees may even harbor their
own unique insect species.
What Corcovado is to biodiversity, the waters surrounding
Caño Island National Park and the Osa are to
productivity. Fish so thick it’s more like fog
and you lose sight of your dive buddy right next to
you. Fish so thick that the mate on the boat will
most likely still be reeling in fish when you're too
tired to do anything but sip and watch. Below Caño's
and the Osa's waves are coral reefs, rock pinnacles
and rolling plateaus that humpback whales like so
much they are here all year. One hundred manta rays
might swim by in tight formation. Pacific white tip
sharks might pass close enough to touch. Here, barracuda
swim in schools the size of small clouds.
The Osa holds much more still… like the largest
mangrove forest on Central America's Pacific, accessible
from the river town of Sierpe. The lost treasure of
Sir Francis Drake is perhaps hidden on the rugged
Isla Violin that rises high out of these swamps. The
Golfo Dulce on the Eastern shore of the Osa is the
deepest tropical gulf in the world. Whale sharks coming
here to give birth is just one of the mysteries revealing
itself from the depths of this calm, flat-water wonderland.
The Osa is also home to one of the oldest and most
mysterious indigenous cultures in Cost Rica, the sphere
makers. Who made these giant granite sculptures aligned
throughout the Osa is unknown.
The incredible diversity and productivity of the Osa
results from the meeting of two hemispheres and two
continents. A mix of currents, ocean waters and nutrient
rich river waters from the highest drainage in Central
America, the forested Talamanca mountains, give birth
to countless fish and marine life. Countless adventures
are available, from diving with dolphins under the
sun to checking out rainforest nightlife through night
vision scopes under the stars. Great difficulty lies
in deciding what to see. |
