Corcovado National Park has since 1975 been the core of the Osa’s eco-bonanza and covering a third of the peninsula. In the town just outside the park, Dos Brazos de Río Tigre, residents historically had minimal economic opportunity except for the environmentally destructive palm oil and gold mining industries, but mining was banned with the establishment of the park and sustainable ecotourism has become a mainstay thanks to the likes of the Corcovado Foundation, which sponsored locals to become tourism guides. It was here I met Xinia and Tomás. Xinia, my “queen of the jungle”, is a small but mighty woman whose determination to create Descanso La Pizote, a tourism project from the old cabin her mother had grown up in has sparked a new wave of eco lodging in Dos Brazos. Out in the rainforest an hour and a half from the village, the cabin sits at the edge of Corcovado. Our afternoon hike out to it – on a trail built by Xinia herself – was marked by sweaty shirts and beautiful wildlife, as we stopped to spot toucans and scarlet macaws (part of Central America’s largest population of macaws; the Osa is also home to not just more than half of Costa Rica’s abundant biodiversity but a full 2½ percent of the entire world’s).
The cabin is rustic – no electricity – but does have running water, piped in from the nearby waterfall to the sinks of the cabin, and there’s a trail leads to a beautiful lookout to watch the sunrise over the ocean in the morning. The only sounds are of millions of cicadas, and Xinia cooking up incredibly flavourful local dishes. From her place you can access the Corcovado trail that leads you back into Dos Brazos – an eight-hour hike that is exhilarating but can also be exhausting. Our young guide Tomás made it even more thrilling with his incredible eye for spotting just about any creature lurking in the trees. Having grown up in the jungle, working with his father to mine gold, Tomás quickly learned the dos and don’ts of Corcovado. He could easily live off the land for a month or so based on his knowledge of the region. He may lack even a sixth-grade education, but he certainly has a PhD in jungle lore. I couldn’t have imagined a more memorable jungle outing, from wandering amidst spider monkeys (above) and baroque strangler trees to having a delicious lunch of gallo pinto (rice and beans), boiled eggs, and fried plantains, all wrapped up neatly in a banana leaf. Other land and sea wildlife in this 424 square-kilometre (164-sq.-mile) park harbours 140 mammal species, 370 bird species and over 10,000 kinds of insects, such as various monkeys, tapirs, sloths, margay cats, marine turtles, and crocodiles. There are even a few endangered jaguars out here, but they’re quite elusive, and visitors are unlikely to spot them. That evening, as I lay under mosquito netting in a comfy log cabin in town (with two and a half walls completely surrounded by rain forest), I was lulled into restful slumber listening to hundreds of nocturnal wildlife species harmonise among the trees, and the next morning came my favourite part of waking up in Costa Rica: a delicious cup of local coffee. Bringing that cup to my lips as the sun begins to warm my skin has become a lasting sensory memory that I hope to relive again and again.
Read more in our post Jawdropping Ecotourism on Costa Rica´s Osa Peninsula.
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