Playa Lagarto to Ostional
PLAYA LAGARTO AND SOUTH
South of Junquillal, the dirt road leads along a lonesome stretch of coast to Nosara (35 km south of Junquillal). Fabulous beaches lie hidden along this route, albeit for most of the way out of sight of the road. Until recently, there were few hotels. Just forest, cattle pasture, lonesome rustic dwellings, and an occasional fishing village. Things are stirring here, finally, and several hotels have opened in the past two years.
If driving south from Tamarindo or west from Santa Cruz on the Santa Cruz-Junquillal road, you must turn south at Soda Las Lucas, four kilometers east of Paraíso—the turnoff is signed for Marbella (16 km) and Nosara. There are several rivers to ford. A four-wheel-drive vehicle is essential.
About six kilometers south of the junction, the road briefly hits the shore at Lagarto before curling inland to Marbella, from where a side road runs down to Playa Lagarcito. Four kilometers farther you’ll pass black-sand Playa Azul. About eight kilometers farther south, a turnoff from the coast road leads to the fishing hamlet of San Juanillo. Ostional is five kilometers farther south.
Paski Adventures (tel. 506/2652-8086) offers sportfishing out of The Sanctuary resort (tel. 506/2682-8111, www.thesanctuaryresort.com).
Accommodations and Food
Casa Mango (tel. 506/2682-8032, donjim@ racsa.co.cr, $12 pp), on a hillside three kilometers south of Marbella, has four handsome yet bare-bones wooden cabinas with fans, and shared bathrooms with cold water only; there is also a thatched casa with kitchen ($60 up to six people). It has a restaurant and bar with pool table and veranda with rockers.
Upscale travelers might check into The Sanctuary (tel. 506/2682-8111, www.thesanctuaryresort.com, $110 s/d rooms, $135- 160 cottages low season; $140 s/d rooms, $175-210 cottages high season), a full-blown resort at Playa Azul. It has condos in a gracious contemporary take on colonial plantation style. There’s a spa, tennis, swimming pool, and water sports. It no longer operates as an all-inclusive resort.
At San Juanillo, Cabinas El Sueño (tel. 506/2682-8074, $35 s/d low season, $40 high season) has 10 colorful, well-lit, simply furnished rooms.
For those who don’t mind spartan accommodations, one of my all-time faves is 
Tree Tops Inn (tel./fax 506/2682-1334, treetopscosta rica@gmail.com, $125-145 s/d), a secluded and rustic one-room bed-and-breakfast tucked above a cove at San Juanillo. This charming place is the home of former race-car champion Jack Hunter and his wife, Karen—delightful hosts who go out of their way to make you feel at home. You’re the only guest. There’s one basically furnished room with outdoor shower. As I said, spartan! You’re here for the spectacular solitude and setting that includes a horseshoe reef with live coral that’s great for snorkeling, and a private beach for an all-over tan. Monkeys cavort in the treetops. The couple offers turtle safaris to Ostional, a swim-with-turtle excursion, plus sportfishing tours; if you catch your own fish, Karen will prepare sushi. She also fixes gourmet five-course dinners ($34 pp). Rates include a real English breakfast. Reservations are essential.
Another delight is the Swiss-run Luna Azul (tel. 506/2682-1400, fax 506/2682-1047, www.hotellunaazul.com, $80 s or $95 d low season, $110 s or $135 d high season), high on a hilltop between San Juanillo and Ostional. Its colorful contemporary aesthetic is appealing, and the views are killer from the mezzanine open-air restaurant overlooking a lovely infinity pool and sundeck. It has seven spacious, cross-ventilated cabins with garden showers. And health treatments are offered. A lovely place!
The hilltop La Joya de Manzanillo (tel. 506/8288-9843, www.lajoyademanzanillo.com), new for 2008 at Playa Manzanillo, has six cabins amid lawns on an old finca. A circular restaurant has all-around views. The rooms are nothing special, however, and have “suicide showers” (there is an electrical switch in the shower unit over your head). Somewhat more impressive is Hotel Villa La Granadilla (tel. 506/8810-8929, http://hotellagranadilla.com, $20 room, $30 suite, $40 apartment low season; $40 room, $50 suite, $60 apartment high season), two kilometers south of San Juanillo. This two-story Spanish colonial-style hotel has three suites, a one-bedroom apartment, and a suite. There’s a pool and thatched restaurant.
Most impressive of the newcomers is Hotel Punta India (tel. 506/8815-8170, www.puntaindia.com, $100 s/d), with six self-contained, two-bedroom, two-story villas. The lovely layout includes poured concrete sofas with colorful cushions, and furnishings are comfortable and simple. I like the thatched open-air restaurant overlooking a pool.
OSTIONAL NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
The 248-hectare Refugio Nacional Silvestre Vida Ostional begins at Punta India, about two kilometers south of San Juanillo, and extends along 15 kilometers of shoreline to Punta Guiones, eight kilometers south of the village of Nosara. It incorporates the beaches of Playa Ostional, Playa Nosara, and Playa Guiones.
The village of Ostional is midway along Playa Ostional, which has some of the tallest breaking waves in the country. The refuge, one of the world’s most important sea turtle hatcheries, was created to protect one of three vitally important nesting sites in Costa Rica for the lora, or olive ridley turtle (the others are Playa Camaronal, and Playa Nancite, in Santa Rosa National Park). A significant proportion of the world’s Pacific ridley turtle population nests at Ostional, invading the beach en masse for up to one week at a time July-December (peak season is August and September, starting with the last quarter of the full moon), and singly or in small groups at other times during the year. Synchronized mass nestings are known to occur at only a dozen or so beaches worldwide (in Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Surinam, Panama, Orissa in India, and Costa Rica).
Time your arrival correctly and out beyond the breakers you may see a vast flotilla of turtles massed shoulder to shoulder, waiting their turn to swarm ashore, dig a hole in the sand, and drop in the seeds for tomorrow’s turtles. The legions pour out of the surf in endless waves. It’s a stupendous sight, this arribada (arrival). Of the world’s eight marine turtle species, only the females of the olive ridley and its Atlantic cousin, Kemp’s ridley, stage arribadas. Ostional is the most important of these. So tightly packed is the horde that the turtles feverishly clamber over one another in their efforts to find an unoccupied nesting site. As they dig, sweeping their flippers back and forth, the petulant females scatter sand over one another and the air is filled with the slapping of flippers on shells. By the time the arribada is over, more than 150,000 turtles may have stormed this prodigal place and 15 million eggs may lie buried in the sand.
Leatherback turtles also come ashore to nest in smaller numbers October-January.
You can walk the entire length of the beach’s 15-kilometer shoreline. Although turtles can handle the strong currents, humans have a harder time: swimming is not advised. Howler monkeys, coatimundis, and kinkajous frequent the forest inland from the beach. The mangrove swamp at the mouth of the Río Nosara is a nesting site for many of the 190 bird species hereabouts.
Turtle Viewing
You must check in with ADIO (Asociación Desarrollo Integral de Ostional, tel./fax 506/2682-0470, adiotort@racsa.co.cr) before exploring the beach; a guide is compulsory ($10) during arribadas, when an entry fee of $10 is payable at the puesto (ranger station) at the southern end of the village, where you check in; you watch a video before entering the beach as a group.
All vehicles arriving at night are requested to turn off their headlights when approaching the beach. Flashlights and flash photography are also forbidden. Personal contact with turtles is prohibited, as is disturbance of markers placed on the beach.
Accommodations and Food
Camping ($3) is allowed at Soda La Plaza, which has a portable toilet.
The refuge administrative office (tel. 506/ 2682-0428, $7 pp), at the south end of the village, has a clean modern dorm for volunteers with a two-week minimum stay.
Pacha Mama (tel. 506/2289-7081, www.pacha-mama.org) is a “spiritual-ecological village,” or commune, on a hilltop near Limonal at the north end of Ostional, about three kilometers inland. Alas, this community has a long history of offending local sensibilities.
Cabinas Ostional (tel. 506/2682-0428, $12 pp), 50 meters south of the soccer field, has six clean, pleasing rooms sleeping three people, with fans and private baths with cold water. Two newer cabins have lofty thatched ceilings. About 100 meters south, the Bar y Restaurante Las Guacamayas (tel. 506/2682-0430, $10 pp) has four small but clean rooms with two single beds, fans, and shared bathroom with cold water only.
At the north end of Ostional is the Hungarian-owned Hotel Rancho Brovilla (tel. 506/8380-5639 or 2280-4919, www.brovilla.com, $33-45 s, $53-65 d room, $60-80 apartment, $125-200 casas), a hilltop retreat with a splendid setting offering views. It has 12 air-conditioned cabinas, each with fans, TV, and a private bath with hot water. It also has two two-bedroom casas and a two-bedroom apartment. There’s a breezy terrace with a plunge pool and restaurant. Plans include tennis courts, horseback riding, fishing, and turtle tours. Rates include breakfast.
Information and Services
The ADIO (Asociación Desarrollo Integral de Ostional, tel./fax 506/2682-0470, adiotort@ racsa.co.cr) office is beside the road, on the northwest corner of the soccer field. Rodrigo Morera, the community leader, is helpful. The ranger booth (tel. 506/2682-0400) is 200 meters south of the soccer field, behind the Doug Robinson Marine Research Laboratory (tel. 506/2682-0812).
The pulpería at the northern end of the soccer field has a public telephone. There’s a police station (tel. 506/8828-2892).
Getting There
A bus departs Santa Cruz for Ostional at 12:30 P.M. (three hours, returning at 5 A.M.); it may not run in wet season. You can take a taxi (about $8) or walk to Ostional from Nosara.
The dirt road between Ostional and Nosara requires you to ford (vanar in Spanish) the Río Montaña (about 5 km south of Ostional), which can be impassable during wet season; sometimes a tractor will be there to pull you through for a fee. About one kilometer farther south the road divides: The fork to the left (east) fords the Río Nosara just before entering the village of Nosara and is impassable in all but the most favorable conditions; that to the right crosses the Río Nosara via a bridge and the community of Santa Marta.
RESPITE FOR THE RIDLEY
Elsewhere in Costa Rica, harvesting turtle eggs is illegal and usually occurs only in the dead of night. At Ostional it occurs legally and by daylight. The seeming rape of the endangered ridley —called lora locally—is the pith of a bold conservation program that aims to help the turtles by allowing the local community to commercially harvest eggs in a rational manner.
Costa Rica outlawed the taking of turtle eggs nationwide in 1966. But egg poaching is a time-honored tradition. The coming of the first arribada to Ostional in 1961 was a bonanza to the people of Ostional. Their village became the major source of turtle eggs in Costa Rica. Coatis, coyotes, raccoons, and other egg-hungry marauders take a heavy toll on the tasty eggs, too. Ridley turtles have thus hit on a formula for outwitting their predators—or at least of surviving despite them: They deposit millions of eggs at a time (in any one season, 30 million eggs might be laid at Ostional). Ironically, the most efficient scourge are the turtles themselves. Since Ostional beach is literally covered with thousands of turtles, the eggs laid during the first days of an arribada are often dug up by turtles arriving later. Often before they can hatch, a second arribada occurs. Again the beach is covered with crawling reptiles. As the newcomers dig, many inadvertently excavate and destroy the eggs laid by their predecessors and the beach becomes strewn with rotting embryos. Even without human interference, only 1 percent to 8 percent of eggs in a given arribada will hatch. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of adult ridleys are killed at sea for meat and to make “shoes for Italian pimps,” in the words of Archie Carr.
By the early 1970s, the turtle population seemed to be below the minimum required to maintain the species. After a decade of study, scientists concluded that uncontrolled poaching of eggs would ultimately exterminate the nesting colony. They also reasoned that a controlled harvest would actually rejuvenate the turtle population. Such a harvest during the first two nights of an arribada would improve hatch rates at Ostional by reducing the number of broken eggs and crowded conditions that together create a spawning ground for bacteria and fungi that prevent the development of embryos.
In 1987, the Costa Rican Congress finally approved a management plan that would legalize egg harvesting at Ostional. The statute that universally prohibited egg harvesting was reformed to permit the residents of Ostional to take and sell turtle eggs. The unique legal right to harvest eggs is vested in members of the Asociación Desarrollo Integral de Ostional (ADIO). The University of Costa Rica, which has maintained a biological research station at Ostional since 1980, is legally responsible for management and review. A quota is established for each arribada. Sometimes, no eggs are harvested; in the dry season (Dec.-May), as many as 35 percent of eggs may be taken; when the beach is hotter than Hades, the embryos become dehydrated, and the hatching rate falls below 1 percent. The idea is to save eggs that would be broken anyway or that otherwise have a low expectation of hatching. By law, eggs may be taken only during the first 36 hours of an arribada. After that, the villagers protect the nests from poachers and the hatchlings from ravenous beasts.
The eggs are dealt to distributors, who sell on a smaller scale at a contract-fixed price to bakers (which favor turtle eggs over those of hens; turtle eggs give dough greater “lift”) and bars, brothels, and street vendors who sell the eggs as aphrodisiacal bocas (snacks). Net revenues from the sale of eggs are divided between the community (80 percent) and the Ministry of Agriculture. ADIO distributes 70 percent of its share among association members as payment for their labors, and 30 percent to the Sea Turtle Project and communal projects. ADIO also pays the biologists’ salaries. Profits have funded construction of a health center, a house for schoolteachers, the ADIO office, and a Sea Turtle Research Lab.
Scientists claim that the project also has the potential to stop the poaching of eggs on other beaches. It’s a matter of economics: Poachers have been undercut by cheaper eggs from Ostional. Studies also show that the turtle population has stabilized. Recent arribadas have increased in size. And hatch rates are up dramatically.
Alas, illegal fishing within the marine park boundaries kills hundreds of turtles each year.