ecotourism: Corcovado National Park

Tapir footprint

I jumped off this waterfall :)

As I mentioned before, Ecotourism is extremely popular in Costa Rica. Over half of the country´s visitors travel to biological reserves or national parks. The tourists are usually attracted to the very exotic and diverse wildlife that can be found among the different ecosystems in Costa Rica. While we were at the Osa Peninsula we went to Corcovado National Park. This park was established in 1975 and covers almost 300 square miles. There is a great variety of wildlife that is found in this park. The park will attract all different types of tourists. It is also the largest primary forest that is on the American Pacific coastline. Corcovado National Park is one of the few remaining lowland tropical rainforests left in the world. It is actually known to have the most species in Central America. There are 40 species of freshwater fish, 140 mammals, 500 different species of trees, 367 species of birds, etc.

It is a really neat park because there are several hundred miles of trails that allow people to get to some of the furthest corners of the park. We were hoping to spot a Jaguar, but we weren´t lucky. We did see Crocodile while we were on the boat and some very neat birds. There were several howler monkeys which woke me up while I was sleeping. They are the second loudest mammal next to the elephant, pretty interesting. We saw a footprint of a Baird´s Tapir…they are so big! It was probably a good thing that I didn´t see one because I would have probably freaked out, but it would have been pretty amazing. The hike we took was very captivating due to the wide variety of life in the park, both plant and animal.