With jaguars, resplendent quetzal birds and green tree top frogs as its kings and queens, exuberant rainforests as its baroque palaces and crystalline raging rivers and majestic volcanoes as its power, Costa Rica (the ¨rich coast¨) has defined a new meaning for wealthy!!
In Costa Rica, visitors will have the privilege to enjoy an assortment of sceneries and ecosystems within a very short drive: dense rainforests where electric blue Morphos and Resplendent Quetzals fly over green baby leaves and fresh flower dew, tropical dry forests where century old trees lit the vistas with pink, yellow and orange splashes, mystic volcanoes with smoky craters where rare sub-alpine dwarf vegetation breathe, golden coasts where surfers will slide through luscious warm sparkling waves and deep blue waters where scuba divers will discover an enchanted world of colorful corals, green sea turtles, blue whales and crowds of mantas.
The best scents are packed in small bottles
Costa Rica, a small country covering only 19,560 square miles, 0.03 percent of the Earth´s surface, contains an astonishing amount of plants and animal life, approximately 6 percent of the world’s biodiversity. In spite of its small size, Costa Rica features greater biodiversity than Europe or North America. This abundance of wildlife is partly due to the country’s geographical position on a land bridge between North America and South America and its environmental protection policies.
Costa Rica’s enormous diversity attracts hundreds of scientists from all over the world. The country’s rainforests are complex biological communities where a usual hectare might be home nearly 100 species of trees. They are habitat for more than 9000 recorded species of plants including 1500 species of orchids. Over 850 species of birds fly over Costa Rica’s rainforests, far more than have been seen in North America, Europe or Australia: 50 species of hummingbirds, 15 parrots (including the exotic scarlet macaw), six toucan species, 45 tanagers, 29 antbirds and resplendent quetzals, with its shimmering green plumage, among others. More than 200 mammal species have been recorded in Costa Rica: monkeys like howler, spider, white-faced capuchin and squirrel monkey, sloths, anteaters, armadillos, agoutis, coatis, peccaries (wild pigs), kinkajous, raccoons, squirrels and bats as well as endangered species like jaguars and tapirs. Flitting around Costa Rica are more than 2,000 species of butterflies (at 10% of the world's butterfly species). One of the most breathtaking is the huge morpho, an electric blue butterfly that you will occasionally watch during sunny days floating over the rivers. Costa Rica is habitat to approximately 150 species of amphibians, some of which are extremely colorful and exotic like red eye leaf frog, the spotted-thighed poison frog and the strawberry poison-arrow frogs. Over 200 species of reptiles live in Costa Rica, snakes, lizards, crocodiles and 14 turtle species including the huge Leatherback, Olive Ridley, Loggerhead and the Hawksbill.