After a great show, both from our local singers and the greater bulldog fishing bats, last night we cruised out of the Osa Peninsula’s outer side, facing the wide Pacific Ocean, into its secluded and calm inner waters of Golfo Dulce – or the “sweet gulf.”
With lush greenery all the way into the very salty waters of the ocean, Golfo Dulce is on the southwestern coast of Costa Rica. On the eastern shore of the gulf, the port of Golfito has a perfect, sheltered harbor. During the late 1930s, the United Fruit Company took notice of Golfito’s potential and established a major shipping port here. By the 1950s more than 90% of the bananas exported from the country passed through here, and Golfito became a booming town of many good and not-so-good things. Following strikes and labor conflicts, the UFC left the area in 1985 and a deep economic depression settled in. Nowadays the city is coming back slowly with tourism, sport fishing, the duty-free shops and a new role as a base for the country’s Coast Guard Academy.
Just thirty minutes by boat from the town of Golfito we can find our morning’s outingː Casa Orquidea. For the past thirty-some years, Ron and Trudy MacAllister have made their lives here. They managed to create quite an incredible haven for themselves, and anyone who wishes to visit them, within the dense greenery of the Golfo Dulce’s forested hills. With some seventy acres to their name, of which about ten percent are now an amazing botanical garden, they decided to leave all that was familiar and embark on a completely different life. Isolated from almost everything and with no road to reach their home, this garden is a pleasure to visit; anything and everything from bromeliads to orchids, palm trees, bananas, Jack fruit, star fruit, Rollinias, and hundreds of other species of plants were waiting for us. We also had great wildlife sightings: a tayra, scarlet macaws, king vulture, red-crowned woodpecker, tanagers, manakins and others.
Back on board for a quick dip in the warm gulf waters, lunch, and a very quick nap, and we were ready to go out again. Some chose to kayak while others took an inflatable boat cruise. As the sun began to set behind the forested hills, National Geographic Sea Lion weighed anchor and began cruising towards our next stop, our next country: Panama.
