Bart & Karin’s trip to the Osa Peninsula
We have been living in beautiful Costa Rica for 8 years and are incredibly lucky to be living in Nosara, a small town on the pacific coast. While, like many others, we had plans to travel back to Europe to visit friends and family, along came COVID and drastically changed all those plans. We decided for our summer break to visit OSA all the way to the south, close to the border with Panama.
Osa, is one of those places that magically never changed, the people that lived and worked for many generations in Osa, work hard to keep the Osa protected. There are 2 large National Parks on the peninsula: the Corcovado National Park and the Piedras Blancas National Park. We ended up staying in Golfito, Matapalo and rented a house on the beach. We knew it was going to be remote, and this would be a real ‘back to nature’ experience. The road took us off the asphalt after Puerto Jimenez and then an hour into the jungle. We followed to dirt road that became only more difficult and narrow, driving the rough little creaks and rivers along the way. Matapalo sits at the end of the road, with nothing further to go to and it was perfect! With really nothing to do: there are no shops, not even groceries store, no restaurants, no town or village even and just a few houses, we were in for some well-deserved rest.
Our daily routine quickly became: morning hike, breakfast, look at all animals that made way through our garden and enjoy a coffee, swim in the sea and read a book. The one time we actually did do something, was also a highlight: we went whale watching for the day – and because of Covid, we found ourselves alone on the boat – and saw many whales and many many dolphins that played with with the boat. It was an incredible relaxing week and unbelievable how surrounded we were by all sorts of animals, we saw monkeys, squirrels, macaws, mapaches and many many more.
If you are a nature lover and looking for peace and connection then there is nothing I can recommend more than this destination.
