Guanacaste National Park

Guanacaste National Park was created in 1983 to connect the dry forest area of Santa Rosa National Park with the cloud forests of the Cacao Volcano and the Orosi Volcano areas with the Caribbean Rainforest. Overall the park has an area of 80300 acres. Rincon de la Vieja National Park is at the close distance of three miles away. Guanacaste National Park works as the perfect biological corridor. Big areas of the Guanacaste Park are recovered pasture lands that have been turned to forest, mainly by just letting the surrounding forest take over the pasture areas and make them wild once again. Scientists have realized that most wildlife species require migrating seasonally or during different life cycles to different life zones in order for species to prosper. Trails over Guanacaste National Park pass through different elevations, enabling you to pass through dry forest, evergreen forest, cloud forest, and rainforest on one same trail. The weather at this Costa Rica Park is probably one of the hottest and driest of the area of Guanacaste. The higher the elevation at any given part of this diverse national park, the higher the chances will be of getting drenched by rain, especially in the afternoons. Annual rainfall is between 70 to 120 inches depending on the elevation.

In general Guanacaste National Park has its life zones divided according to the elevation. The lower parts of the park are covered by dry forest. Cloud forest and rainforest areas are located in the higher regions of the park. This huge Costa Rica park is probably one of the most scientifically monitored national parks. It has three main research stations, Cacao, Maritza, and Pitilla Stations. Cacao Station is located in the southwest slope of the dormant Cacao Volcano at the edges of the cloud forest. Maritza Station is located on the western side of the saddle between Cacao and Orosí Volcanoes. The vegetation at Maritza Station has dry and transitional dry wet forest and it protects headwaters of several important Costa Rica rivers. Research on aquatic biology and on insects is also conducted at Maritza Station. Pitilla Station is on the northeastern side of Orosi Volcano in a very wet rainforest. The interesting characteristic about the Pitilla sector is that the wet rainforest found at this area resembles more the Caribbean wildlife, which lies at 110 miles away, than the Pacific vegetation which lies much closer (around 180 miles away). Another very interesting sector of Guanacaste National Park is El Pedregal. El Pedregal is a plain also known as the Indian Plain where a pantheon of around 100 chiseled petroglyphs representing supernatural beings are halfway buried in the ground.

Guanacaste National Park lodges about 140 species of mammals, 300 bird species, over 100 species of amphibians and reptiles, and more than 10 000 insect species. The most common mammals that can be spotted at this wild Costa Rica park are howler monkeys, white faced capuchins, long nosed armadillos, coatis, pumas, ocelots, black hawks, and collared peccaries among many many other. Trees can grow up to 98 feet tall at the wild Guanacaste National Park. Some of the predominant tree species are Monkey Apple, Santa Maria, and Tempisque.

Horseback riding or hiking tours to Guanacaste National Park can be arranged around the area.