Costa Rica - Pure Osa Written and Photographed by Brad Fitzpatrick
”When tourists want to see Costa Rica
they call a travel agent. When natives want to see Costa Rica
they head to the Osa Peninsula.”
Pura vida—this
ubiquitous Costa Rican greeting is as much as a celebration of
a pace of life as it is an appreciation for the country’s
natural beauty. The concept of pura vida, of the pure life, is
a motto on the country’s Osa Peninsula. The pure life comes
naturally on the Osa, which is home to Corcovado National Park
and the most remote stretches of primary rainforest left in the
country. The sound of birds, frogs, and insects is not drowned
by traffic, since there are no roads through most of the Osa nor
any airplanes. Instead, life remains on the Osa much as it has
been for generations. It is an unaltered an untrammeled wilderness,
a Costa Rican’s Costa Rica.
The Osa owes its preservation to one
quality—inaccessibility. The peninsula’s isolation
has kept it pristine and unaltered while much of the country’s
rain forests have given way, ironically, to eco tourism resorts.
Traveling to the Osa’s west coast is no mean feat—the
most common method is driving several hours from San Jose to the
small town of Sierpe, boarding a boat and traveling down the Sierpe
River to the Pacific Ocean then cruising along the coast until
you reach your destination. Mine was Punta Marenco Lodge, a series
of thatch-and-screen huts just south of Drake Bay. Thanks to submerged
lava rocks as big as cars and a strong tide, Punta Marenco and
neighboring Marenco Lodge have no docks for their boats. The solution?
Sawn timbers as large as your thigh lay scattered on the beach
and serve as mother nature’s own conveyer belt. The nose
of the boat goes on, you jump out into the knee-deep Pacific and
push. Our guide Enoc Espinoza oversaw the operation, pushing for
a time and then yelling for another log in Spanish our boat road
the logs onto the beach.
Welcome to the Osa.
Punta Marenco’s central lodge
and thatch-and-screen guest huts sit on a hillside two hundred
feet above the Pacific, their porches facing the water and uninhabited
Cano Island. To the east lies Corcovado—thousands of square
miles of pristine rainforest broken only by game trails and streams
that drain down from the mountains. If luxury and amenities are
what you seek go elsewhere. The Osa gives a taste of Costa Rica
in its raw form—the coast remains untouched, as do the rainforests
that house such unique species as the leaf cutter and bullet ant,
the scarlet macaw, the coati and the breathtaking fiery-billed
aracari (which often come to the trees around Marenco Lodge to
preen and feed). Encounters with wildlife are commonplace in the
forest. Some species are breathtaking, such as the brilliantly
colored blue morpho butterfly. Others, like the ever-present black
and white capuchin monkeys, are amusing. The forest is not without
its deadly inhabitants as well—there are scorpions and a
variety of venomous including eyelash vipers, aggressive fer-de-lance
and the largest viper on earth, the bushmaster. Precautions such
as walking on clean trails without leaf litter and not touching
leaves and tree trunks will greatly reduce your risk of being
bitten.
The best protection against bad experiences
in the rain forest is a good guide and I know none better than
Enoc. Tour guides everywhere have to serve as jacks-of-all-trades,
fixing flat tires, securing permits, translating, serving meals
and planning routes. This is especially true in a place like the
Osa, where additional services may not be available. Enoc operated
the generator that supplied our power in camp, captained our boat
(no mean feat on a shoreline strewn with Volkswagon-sized lava-rock
boulders just waiting to shred a fiberglass hull), answered hordes
of biological questions on rain forest treks and served as our
general outfitter, caretaker and friend throughout the trip. He
even suffered to learn euchre by candlelight one night, which
I assure you is not an easy game to explain when you don’t
speak fluent Spanish. Even the most seasoned traveler is well
advised to be guided by a competent professional, especially in
an area as remote and unforgiving as the Osa.
On our last afternoon in Marenco I
walked down Marenco’s palm-lined beach, past clear tide
pools where brilliant blue fish were trapped by the retreating
water, and I couldn’t help but wonder how it was that I
was the only person around. No high rises. No rows of sunbathers
or colonies of beach umbrellas. Just the tremendous forest on
my left and the great expanse of blue Pacific on my right It gave
the place a special value, a unique and personal feeling that
seemed to say I’ve been waiting…what took so long
to arrive?
For more info about trips into Costa Rica’s
Osa contact Enoc at www.perladelsur.net.
Brad Fitzpatrick
grew up in southern Ohio, graduated with a degree in biology
from Northern Kentucky University and currently teaches forensics
and anatomy at Southern Hills Career Center in Georgetown,
Ohio.
