The Green Season

They call it the “green season” in Costa Rica – a clever marketing moniker dreamt up to paint a tourist-friendly gloss on the conventional “wet season”. However, it is quite appropriate as much of the tropical forest here is deciduous – the trees lose their leaves - turning the landscape brown in the dry season. Dry tropical forests are some of the most threatened forest ecosystems in the world. This forest is the focus of my visit to north-west Costa Rica and, now, in the green season, the place is a steaming, vibrant jungle.

Islands of the Santa Rosa National Park

My flight from Miami to Liberia, Costa Rica, involved skirting around the edge of Hurricane Rina, but the occasional hole in the cloud blanket below framed tantalising glimpses of Cuba, Lake Nicaragua with its prominent volcanoes and, finally, the wild expanse of northern Costa Rica’s Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG), home to 2.5% of the world’s biodiversity, some of which I would see from the ground later.


Liberia’s international airport terminal is really a giant, open-ended barn functionally decorated with two enormous, spinning fans suspended from the roof. I collected a small, four-wheel drive Suzuki Jimny (I call it Jimmy) and then head off up the Transamericana, or Pan-American Highway.

As I drive I am flanked by mainly pastoral farmland; the occasional sugar cane and rice paddy fields add some variety. On my right is Costa Rica’s spectacular volcanic spine veiled in a grey, thundery shroud (a shroud that would remain lowered throughout my stay in Costa Rica – Chasing the Sun was temporarily suspended!).

View across the forest of the ACG to its volcanic spine in the clouds. Less than a generation ago, this forest was farming land.

During my 90 minute journey to the Santa Rosa National Park – a key part of the ACG – I am listening to soporific music on local radio in a desperate, last-minute attempt to improve my Spanish. I pull up to the park entrance and inflict my germinal, stumbling Spanish for real for the first time. The baptism is neither pretty nor clever, but I manage finalmente.

The road into the park is narrow and becomes increasingly enclosed in an arboreal tunnel. Road signs illustrate silhouettes of jungle creatures to avoid: monkeys, iguanas, deer, etc. (rather more exotic than the mundane silhouette of a cow on the road sign near my house in Cornwall). I arrive at the park’s administration area and spend ages looking for my room – cause to use my dodgy Spanish again! My four wheel drive car comes in handy here as the dirt road is wet, slippery and uneven. Eventually I discover my basic accommodation nestled under high tropical trees, vibrating with jungle noises.

The Jimmy and my national park accommodation

The Santa Rosa National Park was established in 1971. Historically, the area features prominently in Tico (i.e. Costa Rican) history. It was the site of two international battles in the mid-19^th and mid-20^th centuries that ensured Costa Rican independence. Also, later in the 20^th century during the Reagan White House years, the area was involved in the top secret Iran-Contra dealings.

Nearby are the remains of La Casona – an ancient hacienda (farmhouse) – which acted as the focal point for a cattle ranching area eventually covering 100,000 ha. In fact, this was one of the oldest farms in Central America, going back to the late 16^th century, when it was established as a mule production area for the trans-isthmus transport of goods. It was around La Casona that a legendary battle was won by the Ticos in 1856.

La Casona

I explore La Casona. It’s a substantial and not unattractive building surrounded by ancient trees with high, spreading crowns. It radiates history. Some old paddocks just in front of the building are defined by what appear to be vaguely familiar Cornish hedges – part dry stone wall, part earthen bank, part vegetation, shaded and festooned in ferns and moss! A large – and I mean large – prehistoric-looking iguana flops down just in front of me. I don’t know who is more surprised. As I fumble for my camera, it scrambles under some large rocks. Same story when I come upon some deer.

Dan in his natural habitat

I have previously arranged to meet with Dan, an American professor, who has carried out world class ecology and restoration work in this national park since the 1970s. He and his wife Winnie are on one of their frequent research journeys to the park. They come here several times a year, as they have done for decades, from their university in Pennsylvania, USA. They are as much a totem of this park as the historical rationale for its existence. I was first inspired by their work during my Cambridge tropical ecology courses back in the ‘80s (now I feel old!).

Dripping with life

Dan kindly takes me on a tour of the immediate vicinity of the park as I fire questions at him, eager to pick his brain. Before it was formed as a national monument in 1971, the area had been fire-managed for decades to encourage grass growth at the expense of trees, resulting in grasslands with isolated trees and the occasional woody thicket. In 1986 the park was expanded with the goal of restoring and conserving an entire dry tropical forest ecosystem. To cut a long story short, Dan and others showed that this could be done by simply stopping the grass burning allowing the trees to return naturally, while simultaneously developing the socio-economic structures in and around the park to enable this to happen, and to keep it happening. Thirty years down the line the results are stunning. To the uninitiated the forest looks like it has been there forever, and drips life; its verdant density a stage for myriad creatures to act out their lives. I’m transfixed as a large, blue morpho butterfly - one of the biggest in the world - paraglides through the emerald forest. Later, I come face-to-face with a large white-faced macaque as he hunts grubs in a rotting branch. Both of us are startled. He bares his teeth; I back off and decide to eat my own food instead! Yet in a few months the green season will be over; let the brown season begin.

Dry tropical forest restoration; before and 30 years later

The park extends from the marine to the mountain. Where its land and sea join the surf gods have contrived two of the world’s most stunning surfing locations at Playa Naranjo, namely Witch’s Rock (beach break) and Ollie’s Point (point break), named after Ollie North of the afore-mentioned, sordid Iran-Contra episode in the ‘80s. An eleven-kilometre dirt track leads through the park to Playa Naranjo – the only way there other than by boat from some way down the coast. This being the wet/ green season, the track is closed and the only way there is to walk.


I spend a couple of hours trudging along the track. My back has been acting up, in fact it’s driving me mad, and I hope the exercise will do it good. The track passes through some noticeably different vegetation types: the forest is growing back at different rates – some areas are still grass-dominated, others less so, while the most established forest areas are now intimidatingly dense and dark. I wonder if I should be out here on my own – there are jaguars in this park you know! After five kilometres or so, I see a rough sign pointing along a barely discernible track through the forest to the Mirador Valle Naranjo. I walk the kilometre or so to the viewpoint, weaving between large trees and tripping over exposed roots. It’s late afternoon and dusk is around the corner.

 

 

Then, I happen upon a beautiful scene; framed by silhouetted, overhanging branches, I am on the edge of a steep hillside gazing out over a forested coastal plain to the sea. The sun is setting. In the bay, that stack must be Witch’s Rock, and further west, that rocky peninsula must be Ollie’s Point. I am still a good five kilometres away, so I strain my eyes to catch a glimpse of the famous wave. I wait. Is there any swell today? And I wait. Finally, a distant ripple rolls through the glassy sea towards the shore. It breaks perfectly, lazily peeling a right-hand barrel for what seems like eternity – any surfer’s dream. It must have been at least three metres high, otherwise I doubt I would have seen it from this distance. Stunning.

Witch's Rock and Ollie's Point at dusk

Dusk has arrived and descends quickly in this part of the world. I wake from my wave-induced stupor and realize that I still have a six-kilometre walk back to the park administration area. I have no torch. I power walk and arrive just as the monkeys are settling down. A perfect end to a fascinating couple of days.