Corcovado National Park and surroundings, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
After a nice quiet night spent anchored in Drake Bay until the small hours, we made the seven nautical mile trip to our next visitor site on the Osa Peninsula. This is one of the wildest and most remote areas in Costa Rica, semi-separate from the mainland, accessible mainly by boat or small aircraft, and is an area of immense biological diversity. We awoke to similar spectacular scenery as yesterday: steeply rising shorelines draped with thick blankets of tropical vegetation in subtle hues of greens and blues. Once a penal colony, abundant quantities of gold were found in this area, and the subsequent heavy influx of miners and panners posed a grave environmental threat to this unique part of the world. In the mid 70’s, the Corcovado National Park was established, and the “oreros” forcibly removed by Costa Rican police in 1986. This national park protects a fascinating, biologically complex area of land home to an amazingly high diversity of different species, including over 500 species of trees!
After an early breakfast, we disembarked to visit a particularly beautiful section of the park, an area called San Pedrillo. After a typical Costa Rican surf landing, our staff led a couple of wonderful hikes in the area: a more arduous trail adventuring through old, dense forest, over roots, mud and even a stream, to a picturesque waterfall. Many of us brought to life one of our deepest “paradise fantasies”: bathing under a waterfall in the complete wilderness. The second bordered the shoreline and wound through coastal forests, and offered amazing wildlife sightings due to its more open nature: spider and white-throated capuchin monkeys, coatis, agoutis and white-lipped peccaries to name a few of the mammals—and I’ll not even start with the bird species!
We then returned to the ship and repositioned to another beautiful area called Playa Caletas, another typical long Pacific Costa Rican beach of black volcanic sand bordered with dense green forests. Here the weather was nice enough for our Sea Voyager crew to set up a beach BBQ for us, after which we hung out on the beach, went on a couple more nature walks and some even rented horses to go for a long, beautiful ride along the coastline and bordering forests. As we rode along, we passed more monkeys and some scarlet macaws. As we rested at the edge of the picturesque Rio Claro, we saw both a beautiful white hawk and a couple of small spectacled caimans—yet another real sensory overload!
After a nice quiet night spent anchored in Drake Bay until the small hours, we made the seven nautical mile trip to our next visitor site on the Osa Peninsula. This is one of the wildest and most remote areas in Costa Rica, semi-separate from the mainland, accessible mainly by boat or small aircraft, and is an area of immense biological diversity. We awoke to similar spectacular scenery as yesterday: steeply rising shorelines draped with thick blankets of tropical vegetation in subtle hues of greens and blues. Once a penal colony, abundant quantities of gold were found in this area, and the subsequent heavy influx of miners and panners posed a grave environmental threat to this unique part of the world. In the mid 70’s, the Corcovado National Park was established, and the “oreros” forcibly removed by Costa Rican police in 1986. This national park protects a fascinating, biologically complex area of land home to an amazingly high diversity of different species, including over 500 species of trees!
After an early breakfast, we disembarked to visit a particularly beautiful section of the park, an area called San Pedrillo. After a typical Costa Rican surf landing, our staff led a couple of wonderful hikes in the area: a more arduous trail adventuring through old, dense forest, over roots, mud and even a stream, to a picturesque waterfall. Many of us brought to life one of our deepest “paradise fantasies”: bathing under a waterfall in the complete wilderness. The second bordered the shoreline and wound through coastal forests, and offered amazing wildlife sightings due to its more open nature: spider and white-throated capuchin monkeys, coatis, agoutis and white-lipped peccaries to name a few of the mammals—and I’ll not even start with the bird species!
We then returned to the ship and repositioned to another beautiful area called Playa Caletas, another typical long Pacific Costa Rican beach of black volcanic sand bordered with dense green forests. Here the weather was nice enough for our Sea Voyager crew to set up a beach BBQ for us, after which we hung out on the beach, went on a couple more nature walks and some even rented horses to go for a long, beautiful ride along the coastline and bordering forests. As we rode along, we passed more monkeys and some scarlet macaws. As we rested at the edge of the picturesque Rio Claro, we saw both a beautiful white hawk and a couple of small spectacled caimans—yet another real sensory overload!
