The Osa peninsula, due to
the fact that for long time
the only possible access
was by the sea, with
irregular boats service from
the
far
maintained its pristine
conditions despite the frantic
gold rush of the 50 and 60
decades and subsequent
agricultural development.
Only in the 80 decade, a
more or less established
road open the Osa Peninsula
to regular land transportation,
and until the first 90thies the wading of several river along the road from
Chacarita, the cross intersection on the Interamericana Road, until Puerto Jimenez, the main “town” on the area, was normal, and during the rain season was common to have to wait for hours or days for the lowering of the level of the waters. In the Osa peninsula the average level of rainfall is between 4 to 7 metres per years, so you can imagine how often people had to wait for to cross the rivers, situation that today is still common in the part of the road from Puerto Jimenez to Carate, the “door” of the Corcovado National Park.
Being the more far location in the country, from the central capital town, the arrival-departing hub of the international tourist routes, helped the Osa to preserve for all these years its natural jewels like the most extensive rainforest of the whole Central America, the most extensive mangrove swamp, the Sierpe-Terraba rivers with 32.325 hectares of surface , and the populations of endangered wildlife, extinct in most of the remaining country and Central American area.
Jaguars, American crocodile, Baird’s tapir, White-lipped peccary, and the Harpy eagle, still lives in the Osa Peninsula, some of them with healthy, populations like that of the Scarlet macaw, common even in the same streets of Puerto Jimenez, or the Jaguar, other that are only a remaining of the past like the Harpy eagle that re-appeared only few years ago after having been considered extinct. All the species of monkey registered in the country, live here and the Squirrel monkeys, an endemic species, represent the only population of all central America. Almost 400 species of birds live and nest in the Osa, ( the 5% of all the species in the world!), amongst the 750 different species of trees catalogued until today and counting, sharing all the environment that vary from the coastal lowland and marshes, to the dense rainforest covering the sides of hill and mountains, with 140 species of mammals, 117 of reptiles and amphibians, 60.000 species of insects.
So, is not a surprise that, hosting the highest natural diversity per unit area in the world, the National Geographic Magazine defined the Osa Peninsula as” the most biologically intense place on earth”, creating a kind of trademark that is impossible to emulate.
Obviously the abundance of wildlife is not a prerogative of the
land of the Osa but a common characteristic shared with the warm, clean waters of the Golfo Dulce, the sole Fiord of the pacific coast
of the whole Americas, and the Pacific Ocean that surround the Peninsula. Whale sharks, Humpbacked whales, dolphins, sharks and the
most impressive list of record game fish are common the whole year round, with moments of abundance that call sport fishermen from
everywhere in the world, while the bests spots of the country for diving, the Caño Island and surroundings, are often overbooked.