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2
Land and Creatures

Costa Rica stretches from sea to sea. Sandy beaches fringed by palms, grassy savannahs, warm inland valleys, temperate plateaus, smoking volcanoes, frosty peaks, forested slopes and steamy jungles succeed each other across the landscape. Twice as many species of tree are native to the many regions of the country as to the continental United States. More than a thousand types of orchids flourish. The national wildlife treasures are still being discovered and inventoried.

Yet, by most standards, Costa Rica is small. From north to south or east to west, the country runs only 200 miles. The shortest distance between oceans is only 75 miles. With an area of 19,575 square miles (50,700 square kilometers), Costa Rica compares to Vermont and New Hampshire combined, or to the province of Nova Scotia. But the influences of two seas and seasonal tropical winds, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions that have enriched the soil, and altitudes that vary from sea level to nearly 4000 meters, make of Costa Rica a continent in miniature.

Costa Rica drapes itself upon a jagged, mountainous spine that runs from northwest to southeast, part of the great intercontinental Sierra Madre-Andes chain. The volcanic Guanacaste, Tilarán and Central ranges, separated from each other by relatively low passes and valleys, rise successively higher down the northern two-thirds of the country. Traversing the south of Costa Rica and continuing into Panama is the Talamanca range, which encompasses the highest points in the country. Cool and even frigid, the mountain slopes remain in part in their natural, breathtaking, condition, but are more and more being deforested and exploited as pasture.

South of the volcanoes of the Central Range is the Meseta Central, or Valle Central—the Central Plateau, or Central Valley—in every sense the heart of Costa Rica. Measuring only about 20 by 50 miles, the Central Valley covers an area roughly equivalent to that of metropolitan Los Angeles. Yet packed into it are not only the capital city and most of the major population centers, but the richest farmland. Ranging from about 3000 to 5000 feet above sea level, with rolling, forested and farmed terrain, the valley also abounds in natural beauty.

For centuries from the arrival of the Spaniards, virtually the only organized settlement in Costa Rica was in the Central Valley. Even today, this small area is a virtual city-state, dominating every aspect of national life. It claims well over 60 percent of the nation's population, concentrated in the capital, San José, and in the nearby cities of Cartago, Heredia and Alajuela, and in dozens of small towns. Almost all industry clusters around the capital. Small farms crowd all cultivable land, producing vegetables for home use, as well as most of the nation's main export crop, coffee

East of the Central Valley, between the Talamanca Range and the Pacific, is the valley of the General River, which was isolated from the rest of the country until the construction of the Pan American Highway in the 1950s. Here, at elevations lower and warmer than those of the Central Valley, is Costa Rica's fastest-growing concentration of family farms, many operated by migrants from the more crowded core of the country.

Toward the Pacific, Costa Rica tilts precipitously down a slope broken by fast-flowing rivers, some of them harnessed to provide electrical power. In the northwest, on the edge of the hilly Nicoya Peninsula, are miles of sandy beach where Costa Rica's new resort industry is concentrating. Just inland are the savannahs of Guanacaste, populated mostly by fat, grazing cattle. Opposite Nicoya on the mainland is Puntarenas, once the nation's major port. Near Panama are stretches of fertile lowland—once important banana-producing areas—as well as the hilly Osa Peninsula. The remainder of the Pacific coastal area consists of low hills, with a narrow, flat, fertile strip along the water. Temperatures all along the coast are regularly in the eighties and nineties (Fahrenheit), in contrast to the comfortable seventies of the Central Valley.

With its multiple bays, inlets, peninsulas, and hills that plunge into the sea, the Pacific coastline measures more than a thousand kilometers (630 miles), though a straight line from border to border is only half that length. The less broken Caribbean coastline runs only about 212 kilometers (133 miles).

To the northeast of Costa Rica's mountainous spine, the land slopes down to a broad, low-lying triangle of hardwood forest and jungle, with two sides formed by the Caribbean Sea and the 300-kilometer (186-mile) border with Nicaragua. This is the land of eternal rainfall, where coastal storms can blow in at any time of the year. Elsewhere in Costa Rica, the central mountains block Caribbean storms, and it rains only from May to November, when the winds are from the Pacific.

For many years, the eastern lowlands were the impenetrable Costa Rica. Heat, disease, swamps and apparent lack of resources kept the first European explorers even from crossing the area, and the highlands were settled from the Pacific coast. It was only with the construction of a railroad to the sea at the end of the last century, and the immigration of workers from Jamaica, that permanent settlements were established. Even today, communication is difficult and population sparse. Few roads disturb the landscape in the forests along the border with Nicaragua, and most transport is by riverboat and canoe.

With its varied climates, the Costa Rican earth can and does produce all the fruits and vegetables of the temperate zones, along with tropical plants, from mangoes, papayas, pineapples and oranges to chayote, anona, pacaya, zapote and many others whose names in English are either non-existent, or so unfamiliar as to be meaningless.

But for all the diversity of the land, Costa Rica has always relied mostly on a handful of crops. Corn and beans dominated the subsistence scratched from the earth for centuries as a colony, and are still the staples of most Costa Ricans' diet, along with rice. Coffee, grown in and around the Central Valley, and bananas, grown along both coasts, turned Costa Rica from a poor backwater into one of the better-off nations of Latin America. Sugar, in the lower elevations, and cotton, from the Pacific lowlands, are newer exports, along with beef from the grazing lands of Guanacaste. On these few products, with their rising and falling prices and years of lean and bountiful harvests, the prosperity of the nation depends.

Costa Rican flora and fauna, and tropical flora and fauna in general, are too varied to be treated justly in a small section of this book, or even in a few books devoted exclusively to the subject. Botanists refer to the natural exuberance of the tropics as "species richness." An area that supports two or three types of trees in the temperate zones might lodge dozens or even hundreds of plant species from ground level to forest canopy in the tropics. Some dimensions of this natural abundance in Costa Rica: More than 2000 species of tree have so far been catalogued, twice as many as in the continental United States. Two-thirds of all known seed plants are found in Costa Rica. And there are over 1000 orchids, ranging from the guaria morada, the purple national flower, down to those with blossoms too tiny to be casually noticed; more than 800 species of fern; and so on, and so on.

One explanation of this variety takes into account the poverty of many tropical soils, which might encourage plants to adapt and compete for nourishment at all levels, up to the tops of the tallest trees. Some draw nutrients from the soil, others feed themselves by sending roots into neighboring plants as parasites, or by capturing dust and decay washed down by rain. All nutrients are continually recycled. Abundant water helps to make this many-tiered world possible. Plants take moisture from the earth, the rain, from pools in large leaves, and from the very humidity of the air around them.

This general tropical description applies to much of the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica, and to cloud forest at high elevations. The temperate central valley, with its grassy meadows, pine forests, and rich volcanic soil, will not appear exotic to most visitors. But even here, a number of trees flourish that are so unfamiliar as to be without names in English. The Pacific lowlands, also with rich soil, support their own varieties of forest, which vary according to rainfall.

As a bridge between two continents, Costa Rica is home to animal forms both familiar and exotic. More than 750 species of bird inhabit Costa Rica, as many as in all of the United States. These range from common jays and orioles to large-beaked toucans and macaws, and the exquisite and elusive long-tailed quetzals of the trogon family. The national list includes 50 species of hummingbird, 45 tanagers and 72 flycatchers.

As for mammals, monkeys abound, among them howler, spider, white-faced and the tiny marmoset. White-tailed deer, raccoons and rattlesnakes, all common in North America, live alongside their South American cousins, the brocket deer, coatimundi and bushmaster. Sea turtles—six of the world's eight species—nest on Costa Rica's shores. Alligators, peccaries (hatchback versions of the domestic pig), tepezcuintles (pacas), jaguars, ocelots, pumas and many other "exotic" species are still not uncommon in parts of the country.

Paradoxically, many of these species are difficult to sight. In settled areas, native animals and plants have been wiped out by hunting, land-clearing and poaching. In less-settled areas, the lack of roads and trails keeps out the interested visitor. Fortunately, however, many species can be seen in Costa Rica's national parks.

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