Costa Rica entices ecotourists
- by crv.staff
- 15.07.09
- 8:04 AM UTC
- Filed in Costa Rica, Costa Rica Eco Tour
I’d like to share this report I found about ecotourism activities in Costa Rica. If you’ve never been, here are some great ideas for things to do!
Source: Desmoines Register
Originally published, Sun Jul 12, 2009
By JANA WARREN
Costa Rica beckoned my brother, Jeff Kitterman, and me last December for our first ever brother-sister adventure outside the United States.
Ecotourism in Costa Rica fit our goal of exploring an exotic natural world. We chose two areas for our eight days of travel: first, the Osa Peninsula, home of Corcovado National Park, and then cloud forest reserves near Monteverde.
Costa Ricans have found a kindred spirit in ecotourists, attracting people from all over the world to see their verdant land. This has also rekindled national pride in the many natural treasures and stimulated their economy.
In an airport line, I met Alvaro Ugalde, father of Costa Rica’s national parks, who has led his country to commit more than 25 percent of its land to national protection. He told me of his continued efforts to work with his “problem child,” Corcovado, where his goal is to sustain the natives, while saving the jaguars and reclaiming the ecosystem from hunters and grazers.
After a six-hour flight from Minneapolis to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, our first stop was an overnight stay at the Bougainvillea, an oasis of splendor high on a mountainside in northeastern Santa Domingo.
Our choice couldn’t have been better, for the grounds had voluptuous gardens, sculptures and a haven for bird-watching. Inside the hotel, an extensive art collection was full of Costa Rican antiques and modern art.
Little did we know what an adventure the next day would bring as we traveled to our ecolodge. We boarded an air bus, which flew us from San Jose south over the verdant coffee plantations in the Cordillera de Talamanca mountains. We had a stupendous landing in green Golfito, followed by a water taxi ride across a bay where whales birth their calves, arriving in Puerto Jimenez, all before 8 a.m.
There we met other hungry travelers, and ate breakfast together on fresh mango juice, eggs with hot sauce and handmade tortillas.
Enter our taxi driver, who handed me his cell phone with a call from Lana, the proprietor of Luna Lodge, telling us how we would make the last leg of the journey. We climbed into a 1973 Cessna for an eye-popping ride over Golfito Bay and down the coast.
Macaws flew under our plane, and we spied whales and dolphins in the ocean. After landing in an airstrip doubling as a horse pasture, our lodge driver met us for a four-wheel trek up the seaside mountain, fording a swollen river four times before reaching our ecolodge.
Luna Lodge was built using local materials and is full of plants, birds, trails and waterfalls. We ate wonderful organic food, and the congenial staff of nationals served us with gusto and shared life stories. We listened to Costa Rican history and discussed current events at congregate meals. Jeff hired a guide to take a day trip to Corcovado National Park while I bird-watched and photographed flowers and birds, after doing my yoga in the oxygen-saturated air.
Among the highlights were the annual arrival of Samantha the sloth – she comes every year to have her baby – viewing poison arrow frogs, walking the volcanic sand beach and glimpsing Morpho butterflies.
We took a van transport to our next adventure in the Monteverde cloud forest in the central portion of Costa Rica. Our bed and breakfast hostess’ son was a licensed guide. The next eight hours were filled with an enchanted walk through an endangered ecological forest where dozens of hummingbirds whizzed by, and the national flower, the orchid, bloomed at every bend in the path.
My brother stayed for six more days, beaching it on the Pacific side, with forays to Manual Antonio National Park for beach walking, surfing and boat excursions. I left with a renewed respect for the diversity that makes up life on Mother Earth.
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