The Osa Peninsula is home to part of Corcovado National Park. This park is said to be the "most biologically diverse" region in the world by National Geograhic. It also has the greatest population of scarlet macaws. Not that you care or anything, just to let know. We were armed with everything imaginable for our week of adventures. This was my first trip into one of the rainforests of Costa Rica.
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The left
shows the route we took to get to the OSA Peninsula. The
whole trip was a combination of buses, boats, taxis, and
LEG POWER!
Setting up camp at Cocalito Lodge on the first night. This was actually the first time I had ever done "tent camping". We found a nice spot just by the beach so we could hear the waves crashing. *map scanned from the Lonely Planet: Central America on a Shoestring |
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LEFT: Hiking along the
beach towards Marenco. The sand made the hike so much
more difficult, and so did our our 80lb backpacks. RIGHT: We stumbled onto this eerie cave tucked behind a little waterfall. It was deep and filled with water. We were too chicken to venture into the cave. Who knows what could be in there? |
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LEFT: About 50% of our
hike was along gorgeous, almost empty beaches like this
one. This one's called Playa Josecito (Lil' Jose´s
beach), named after me, of course. RIGHT: Had a big pasta lunch at Poor Man's Paradise. A welcomed surprise as we were expecting to eat some of that nasty camp food. |
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 ABOVE: After 8hrs of intense leg burning, back-breaking hiking, we got pampered at Mapache Lodge the very next day. We stayed for two nights for FREE!! and had Italian home cooking. Very nice after eating granola and "dried-foods-in-plastic-bags" the whole hike. |
BELOW: From the dock at
Mapache Lodge on the Sierpe River, one of the most
beautiful sunsets I've ever seen.  |
OK,
it's time for one of my stories:
During our FREE stay at Mapache Lodge, I got a chance to help out
with some duties. One of them had to do with fixing up the
computers (my specialty). At this time, the owner of the lodge
(Italian lady, who spoke English to us, Italian to her mother,
French to a French couple and Spanish to everyone else, all
without getting her tongue tied!) had tried to get a way to get
fax capabilities at the lodge, which was in the middle of
nowhere. She was unsuccessful at doing this because of the poor
phone lines, and had to go into town to send and receive faxes -
A BIG hassle. Luckily, her laptop had a modem and I had a CD-ROM
full of goodies (software), that included a fax program. I
installed it and tried sending a fax. She called town to see if
it was received, and IT WAS! The next thing you know, she starts
to cry (I mean really cry) because she
was so happy! She said we were like angels sent to help
her. I felt all warm and tingly inside. And you people still
doubt the power of computer technology. Shame on you! Have
you hugged your computer lately?
BELOW: A cool morning boatride heading back
to Sierpe and onto the next leg of our adventures - Cerro
Chirripo. We spent a total of $60US on boat rides alone.
It was worth it though; I've always loved boat rides. We
also got to go through a mangrove swamp. Very cool! (Too
bad the picture didn't show up to well.) |
 ABOVE: From Palmar to Sierpe, the whole area seemed to be like one giant plantain (like bananas) farm. Each bunch was wrapped around in plastic for protection. A sumbliminal message about safe sex?? hmm... |
