OSTIONAL NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

The 248-hectare Refugio Nacional Silvestre Vida Ostional begins at Punta India, about two km south of San Juanillo, and extends along 15 km of shoreline to Punta Guiones, eight km 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 two vitally important nesting sites in Costa Rica for the lora, or olive ridley turtle (the other is 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–Dec. (peak season is August and September), and singly or in small groups at other times during the year.

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 until they are so densely packed that, in the words of the great turtle expert Archie Carr, “one could have walked a mile without touching the earth—literally. You could have run a whole mile down the beach on the backs of turtles and never have set foot on the sand.”

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. Synchronized mass nestings are known to occur at only nine beaches worldwide (in Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Surinam, Orissa in India, and Costa Rica). Playa 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 Oct.–Jan., with arribadas most months starting with the last quarter of the moon. In 1997, for the first time, an arribada occurred at Playa Nosara, south of Ostional.

You can walk the entire length of the beach’s 15-km shoreline, which is littered with broken eggshells. 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.

Wealthy foreigners have bought much of the land surrounding the refuge. Environmentalists fear that development, the influx of too many people in this sacred refuge, and the lights and human activity will discourage the turtles from nesting. The local community is hostile to tourism development, after the lesson of Nosara, its southerly neighbor, where foreign buyers have forced land values out of the reach of local residents. This unwanted development threatens to remove the community’s control over its resources. Hotel developers are also pushing hard to get permits, but so far Ostional residents have had the courts on their side. The priority is the purchase of the land adjacent to Ostional to establish buffer zones and ensure the protection of the nesting grounds. Only then can the indigenous community be assured that it has taken command of a sustainable egg-harvesting program that meets the challenge of protecting the turtles while addressing the community’s needs.

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Turtle–Viewing
You must check in with ADIO (see Information, below) before exploring the beach; a guide is compulsory ($7) any time of year. An entry fee of $6 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 are also forbidden, and no flash photography is permitted. Personal contact with turtles is prohibited, as is disturbance of markers placed on the beach.

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Information and Services
The ADIO (Asociación Desarrollo Integral de Ostional, tel./fax 506/682-0470, adiotort@racsa.co.cr, http://ostionalcr.tripod.com) office is beside the road, on the northwest corner of the soccer field. Rodrigo Morera, the community leader, is helpful. The toll and ranger booth, run by ADIO, is 200 meters south of the soccer field, at the junction of the path to Doug Robinson Marine Research Laboratory (tel. 506/207-5966, cachi@biologia.vcr.ac.cr). The rustic hut houses research volunteers and scientists.

The pulpería at the northern end of the soccer field has a public telephone.

There’s a police station (tel. 506/828-2892) here.

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Getting There
A bus (tel. 506/221-7202) departs San José for Santa Cruz at 7 a.m., arriving at noon; from here, take the 12:30 p.m. bus to Ostional (three hours, returning at 5 a.m.); it may not run in wet season. Alternately, an Alfaro bus departs San José for Nosara at 6 a.m., arriving around noon. You can take a taxi (about $8) or walk to Ostional.

The dirt road between Ostional and Nosara requires you to ford the Río La Montaña (about five 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 km further the road divides; that 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 (the bridge has washed out); that to the right crosses the Río Nosara via a bridge and the community of Santa Marta.