CORCOVADO NATIONAL PARK ARTICLE

My friends and I had a real Costa Rica adventure here, battling a 450 pound marlin in tropical waters.

I hope this article (about this park, not the fishing) helps you enjoy your Costa Rica vacation even more. Corcovado National Park (Parque Nacional Corcovado) is known as the Amazon of Costa Rica. With good reason.

This tiny park, just 42,000 hectares (about 100,000 acres) in size, is found on the Osa Peninsula, located along the south Pacific coast of Costa Rica, close to the Panama border.

It is the largest remaining primary forest in Central America and if you are into Costa Rica ecotourism, hike it on your Costa Rica vacation.

Fabulous tropical forests covered the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and there were so many sea turtles that sometimes mariners, lost in the fog, found land by listening to the sounds of tens of thousands of animals paddling towards nesting beaches. Unfortunately, the passage of 500 years 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.

About 75 years after Columbus landed on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica an English sea captain, Sir Frances Drake (you may recall that he is the fellow who destroyed the Spanish Armada in 1588 and saved England from Spain), explored its Pacific coast and, indeed, landed in a lovely bay on the north end of the Osa Peninsula.

Famous for its gateway to the Osa and its fabulous sports fishing, you may have heard of it: Drake Bay.

How intense is this? Consider.

The continental United States---48 States---has 900 or so different species.

The largest remaining population of magnificent Scarlet Macaws in Central America lives there, some 1000. Visitors are regularly able to watch these birds in flight or feeding near the shoreline.

The mangrove swamps, montane forest and jolillo palms of Corcovado provide a home for 139 different species of mammal and 116 species of amphibian and reptile. The mammals (including six species of wild cats) represent a 10th of the species of mammals still alive in the Americas and are supported on only 0.000101777% of the landmass.

If you are a fan of amphibians (I am talking about frogs here) Corcovado is a great place to spot the glass frog, poison-arrow frogs, and the rare red-eyed tree frog. It is also one of few places in Costa Rica you will find squirrel monkeys. You'll find fishing bats hunting for fish over the rivers at night.

This park is believed to be one of the last stands of the Harpy Eagle which is probably on its way to extinction in Costa Rica.

The seemingly deserted beaches of the park provide a nesting ground for four species of sea turtle and because of the large tapir population jaguars and crocodiles also inhabit this area.

These animals prefer to hunt around the edges of the Corcovado Lagoon and are sometimes sighted. The footprints of this large carnivorous cat are often found in the mud trails which surround the lagoon.

The forests of Corcovado are as impressive as the rainforests of the Amazon, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

This area receives as much as 400 cm or rain annually and torrential rains fall during the April to December months. When you travel Costa Rica, it is best to plan a trip to Corcovado in the dry months, January to April.

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Pura Vida!

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