Golfito Area

For years I had heard people speak of Golfito and the Osa Peninsula. The area sounded like a place of adventure panning for gold in forest streams, fishing for trophy sailfish, or hiking rain-forest trails. In order to complete research for this book, I resolved to spend some time around Golfito to collect information. But when I asked folks around San Jose who either owned property or regularly visited here, I found their answers short and vague, always skirting the subject as if trying to draw my attention elsewhere. When I spoke with a man who owned property on Zancudo Beach, his face burned angrily as he said, Zancudo is may special place, and I dont want any damned travel writers drawing attention to it! It would destroy things for all of us!
Obviously, our interview was over, but now I knew I had to go! I jumped in a car and was soon on my way to Golfito, the jumping-off place for the PavonesZancudo Beach areas. The drive south on the Pan American Highway is gorgeous. One unbelievable view after another invites a pause wherever the car can be parked safely off the pavement.

Ordinarily the trip takes six hours, but by the time I stopped several times to sample pork chicharones, marvel over the views, and take a nap in the shade of a banana tree, the trip stretched into an eight-hour day. When truck traffic is diverted along a completed new coastal highway, you will be able to make the trip in five hours from San Jose.
Golfito is an often neglected part of Costa Rica, with scanty information provided by most tourist guides. The town began its existence as a banana port for United Fruit Company but was abandoned when the company decided that the operation had become unprofitable. When it was a banana port, there was no incentive to develop it as a tourist attraction, although today the area is trying hard to do so.
Sitting on a bay of Golfo Dulce, Golfitos waterscape is absolutely gorgeous, reminiscent of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound (that is, as long as you are facing away from the town!). The coastline and islands jut steeply from the water, green and matted with trees, vines, and thick brush. The water is so calm at times that it is hard to realize that this is not a lake but a protected little bay of the Pacific Ocean. From the slope z rain forest watches over the town as fishing boats ply the calm waters of the Golfo Dulce. During the towns banana-shipping days, the company wisely kept these mountain slopes as a wildlife preserve and watershed, ensuring Golfito a relatively pure water supply.
The town itself can hardly be described as anything but picturesque. It looks like a clich movie set of a banana-shipping port. Just a few blocks wide, the town follows the waters edge, with some houses actually standing over the water on stilts and others clinging to the cliffs and hanging out into empty space. A couple of excellent hotels accommodate the growing number of curious tourists, but most lodgings are rather rustic.
A surprising number of North Americans live in or around Golfito. One place to meet them is at Louis Brenis Restaurant, which sits across from Ia bomba (the gasoline station). The Costa Rica Surf Bar is another local gringo hangout. The main commercial street, looking ramshackle, climbs a hill paralleling the highway and waterfront. Foreign residents patronize a couple of open-air restaurants here, as well as hardware stores, shops selling tackle and boating supplies, and several red-light bars.

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