About an hour’s drive north of Puerto Jiménez, this village has become another of the Osa’s rural tourism and ecotourism hubs, with a tourism cooperative offering locally led tours, activities, and accommodation. Here’s where I met Carlos Villalobos, the visionary, fortysomething owner of more than 400 hectares (1,000 acres) of conserved rainforest. After studying tourism and forestry in capital San José, he brought his knowledge back to “monetise” the rainforest to empower the community through tourism. Carlos has also been very diligent about conserving a small lagoon that separates the town from the extensive rainforest on his property and where we listened to howler monkeys roar and spotted flocks of endemic birds as we canoed its calm waters. Sunrise the next morning led us to Juan Cubillo, also fortysomething, a gold miner-turned-tour operator who leads artisanal gold mining tours on his ranch, Finca las Minas. Since opening up his property to tourism, Juan has been able to walk away from mining and focus on sharing the heritage of the Osa by providing hands-on experiences for visitors. I was in awe of the intensity and backbreaking work that goes into artisanal gold mining. You could imagine my excitement after the second try, Juan and I actually found a few specks of gold! But I couldn’t imagine doing such intense labor for hours on end for weeks at a time, sometimes months, in order to put food on the table. Other Rancho Quemado activities/attractions include a butterfly garden; cooking classes; a traditional sugarcane mill; a women’s crafts cooperative; storytelling sessions (with interpreters, obviously); various rainforest excursions including night walks and horseback riding; and farms raising dairy cows, cacao, and palm trees (all family-owned, not corporate).
Read more in our post Jawdropping Ecotourism on Costa Rica´s Osa Peninsula.
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