Corcovado National Park

Corcovado National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Corcovado is the great rainforest park on the Osa Peninsula in the far south of Costa Rica, and since 2014 everyone must enter with a licensed guide and a permit booked in advance, so the tours are not optional. The choice is between the two gateways. From Drake Bay on the north coast, reached by boat from Sierpe or by small plane, the day tours go by boat to the San Pedrillo station, the closer one with waterfalls and a short trail, or to the Sirena station, the heart of the park with the richest wildlife; the Sirena boat takes about an hour and a half each way and the day gives four or five hours on the trails.

From Puerto Jiménez on the gulf side, reached by road or plane, the day tours drive to Carate and walk in to La Leona, or take the boat to Sirena. The overnight tours that sleep at the Sirena ranger station in bunks or tents, with meals, are the best of all, because the dawn and dusk hours at the station are when the tapirs, the peccary herds and the cats are about; two nights is ideal. Combination days with Caño Island snorkelling from Drake Bay or Uvita are for people short of time. The park permit, the guide, the boat and the meals at Sirena are booked as a package by the operators, since the station's capacity is capped and sells out in the dry season; there is no walking in without a guide.

Visiting Corcovado National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 1975 and covers about 425 square kilometres, a third of the Osa Peninsula, protecting the largest remaining piece of lowland Pacific rainforest in Central America and what National Geographic once called the most biologically intense place on earth. It is a park of giant trees, deserted beaches and rivers that have to be waded, with mangroves and a lagoon in the Corcovado basin at its centre, and its wildlife is seen with a frequency unmatched elsewhere in the country: scarlet macaws in pairs and flocks along the beaches, all four Costa Rican monkeys including the endangered squirrel monkey, coatis, tamanduas, two species of sloth, agoutis and herds of white-lipped peccaries that rattle their teeth in the undergrowth.

Baird's tapirs sleep in the mud near Sirena and are the station's speciality, along with the crocodiles and bull sharks at the mouth of the Sirena river and the very occasional puma or jaguar on the trails at dawn. Harpy eagles nest in the interior, and the bird list passes 400. The Sirena station sits behind the beach in the middle of the park at the end of a long trail from La Leona along the shore, timed to the tides, and its trail network loops through primary forest and along the rivers. San Pedrillo in the north has the Llorona waterfall and a shorter coastal trail, and the Los Patos entrance in the east walks in through the hills. Gold miners worked the park until the 1980s and the peninsula's towns grew from their camps.

Corcovado National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from 7 am to 4 pm for day visitors, with Sirena open to overnight guests on booked permits and the number of visitors capped at each station. The dry season from December to April is the easiest for the trails and the boats, and the busiest, with Sirena sold out weeks ahead;

the green season from May to November brings heavy afternoon rain, swollen river crossings and the closure of Sirena to visitors in October, though the wildlife is as good and the forest at its fullest. Morning is the best time on every trail, and the overnight at Sirena gives the dawn. Allow one full day at the least and two nights for the real park. Drake Bay and Puerto Jiménez are the bases, Caño Island the marine day trip, and the Golfo Dulce the place for dolphins and, in season, whales.