Here's our pick for the best of both coasts. We'll start with the Caribbean.
The Talamanca mountains tower among the highest of any in Central America, and the canton of Costa Rica that bears their name drops from the lofty highlands to where they plunge into the Caribbean sea.
These mountains hold one of the largest wilderness areas in Central America. Beautiful beaches cloaked in vegetation rise to rainforest-clad highlands that give way to the peaks' ecosystem known as paramo. Talamanca probably shelters Costa Rica’s greatest remaining concentration of indigenous people, her largest national park and her greatest biodiversity.
Ten thousand feet above the oceans, the Talamancan ridge line stretches into Panama. The summits crest higher at various peaks, the tallest being 3820 meter Chirripo in the National Park of the same name.
The South American Andes version of the alpine ecosystem is called paramo and here you can see it trekking along tunnel like trails of dense gnarled growth broken by patches of wildflowers and views from the top of the world --you can gaze at both the Caribbean and the Pacific. Amistad National Park, a friendship park between Costa Rica and Panama, protects this high wonderland together with Chirripo National Park and multiple other protected areas.
These parks, together with their buffer of Indian reserves, national forests and national wildlife refuges, forms the Talamanca Biological Corridor and it protects much more than just paramo and vistas. This United Nations World Heritage sight contains the perhaps the highest biodiversity in a little place of anywhere in the world along with the Osa Peninsula.
North and South American flora and fauna meet at the bottleneck of the Talamancas. Here grow cloud forests and rainforests, humid forests and wet forests, paramo and mangrove swamps, dolphins and Indian forest dwellers. From Chirripo to the coastal forests of the Gandoca Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge, the wilderness is only broken by only a few small roads.
The indigenous tribes come out of the forests and make the adaptation to town life in Bri Bri. This town serves as a kind of indigenous capital for the nearby reserves of the Bri Bri, Cabecar, KekoLdi, Telire and Tayni tribes. Most of the reserves are rugged and inaccessible terrain. Some inhabitants of Bri Bri don’t really want visitors, but there are some restaurants and general stores where tourists might get a chance to meet these peoples. The are also guides available for Costa Rica’s most epic week long wilderness trek, crossing the Talamancas to the Pacific slope. The hunted wildlife in the reserve areas can be rather wary compared to animals in the national parks.
Indigenous culture mixes with West Indies African culture on the Talamanca coast and then stirs it up with international surf culture. Some say the Indians lived along the rivers for long time, and African fishermen settled the choice spots on the coast beginning more than 100 years ago. The surfers and ecotourists started showing up around thirty years some years ago. The towns of Puerto Viejo and Cahuita radiate a funky laid back party feeling, and the villages of Punta Uva and Manzanillo and Gandoca take it easier still with pure positive vibrations. Dominos in the shade and live reggae in the sand… or maybe sip a coconut on your very own slice of golden beach backed by thick jungle and palms? The perfect beaches of the coast are so idyllic you might shed a tear at the shear beauty of it.
The forest-clad rocky headlands of the Talamancas spill into the sea from the KekoLdi Indigenous Reserve to the Gandoca Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge’s Punta Mona. The old villages of Gandoca and Manzanillo were allowed to remain when the zoned wildlife refuge was formed. Just offshore of Manzanillo lies Costa Rica’s biggest area of coral reefs. You can walk from the shade of the jungle palms into the blue Caribbean and swim along multicolor corals cut by bright sand right off the beach. A small barrier reef known as Long Shoal lies further offshore. Jimmy Reef, Bloody Reef, and Sugar Reef are Costa Rica´s best beach dives. This Refuge probably protects Costa Rica’s highest marine biodiversity. Adventures ranging from looking for pilot whales to medicinal plant hikes go out every day with skilled naturalist guides.
You will not see all Talamanca has to offer in a lifetime. The greatest diversity of ecosystems and cultures make this area a spicy banquet for the senses. Gorgeous three or four hour drives to the coast or highlands are worth the trips just in themselves. Weather you stay in a tent or in resort, you will not want to spend much time in your room in Talamanca.
Now that you know a bit bout de Caribbean, check out the words on the Pacific.
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 rock sphere unearthed in a misty forest? The Osa. Bigger than most Caribbean islands, the Osa peninsula sprouts the wildest coast left in Costa Rica.
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 many other protected areas including 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, offshore rises lush Caño Island and further still the superbioproductive blue water pelagic.
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 many 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 electricity 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 a excellent five hour road trip maybe add on another hour or so by boat.
Two protected areas, Corcovado National Park and Caño Island Biological Reserve 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 more species of hardwood trees than you will ever know the name of. Scientists speculate that here some individual rainforest trees may even harbor their own unique insect species. Whoa.
What Corcovado is to biodiversity, the waters surrounding Caño Island Biological Reserve and the offshore blue water pelagic Osa are to bioproductivity.
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. Fish so thick not every diver will even get into the water. 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 during the migrations of each hemisphere . 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 and silky sharks might come by the dozen. Dolphin pods cover square kilometers, tuna schools can be bigger. Baitballs of little lantern fish can dwarf all of the above. The blue water pelagic is like the marine version of the African velt.
The Osa holds much more still… like the largest mangrove forest on Central America's Pacific, accessible from the river towns of Sierpe and Cortez. The lost treasure of Sir Francis Drake is perhaps hidden on the rugged Isla Violin that rises high out of these vast mangrove mazes. A fabled Indian fortress perhaps lies hidden in the heavily rainforested peaks that drop shear on one side to the pounding Pacific. Cliffs, caves and waves and waterfalls, thick, green jungle, stone arches and mysterious monoliths, a lost Indian city. This is the stuff of peter pan and pirate fantasy.
The Golfo Dulce on the Eastern shore of the Osa is the deepest tropical gulf in the world and enjoys a no nets rule. Whale sharks coming here to give birth is just one of the mysteries revealing itself from the depths of this calm, flat-water wonderland. This unique tropical fjord spectacularly drops from premontane cloud forests to unknown deep water ecosystems.
The Osa is also home to one of the oldest and most mysterious indigenous cultures in Cost Rica, the sphere makers. Who really made these giant stone sculptures aligned throughout the Osa is unknown. The finest gold craftsmanship of the Americas also originated here, the legendary lost wax technique.
The incredible diversity and productivity of the Osa and Talamanca results from the meeting of two hemispheres and two continents. A mix of mountains, forests, currents, ocean waters and nutrient rich river waters from the massive Talamanca watersheds, birthes countless terrestrial, aquatic and marine life. Countless adventures are available, from diving with tuna in the big blue under the offshore sun to checking out rainforest nightlife under the canopy beneath the stars. Great difficulty lies in deciding what to see and do. Wanna learn more?
Go Caribe Go Pacific
Shawn Larkin CostaCetacea 2010