SANTA ROSA NATIONAL PARK

Santa Rosa was founded in 1972 as the country’s first national park. The 49,515-hectare park, which covers much of the Santa Elena peninsula, is part of a mosaic of ecologically interdependent parks and reserves—the 110,000-hectare Guanacaste Conservation Area (GCA)—that incorporates Santa Rosa National Park, Rincón de la Vieja National Park, Bolaños Island Wildlife Refuge, the Junquillal Bay National Wildlife Refuge, and the Horizontes Experimental Station, abutting Santa Rosa to the south.

Parque Nacional Santa Rosa is most famous for Hacienda Santa Rosa—better known as La Casona—the nation’s most cherished historic monument. It was here in 1856 that the mercenary army of American adventurer William Walker was defeated by a ragamuffin army of Costa Rican volunteers. The old hacienda-turned-museum alone is well worth the visit.

The park is a mosaic of 10 distinct habitats, including mangrove swamp, savanna, and oak forest, which attract more than 250 bird species and 115 mammal species (half of them bats, including two vampire species), among them relatively easily seen animals such as white-tailed deer; coatimundis; howler, spider, and white-faced monkeys; and anteaters. In the wet season the land is as green as emeralds, and wildlife disperses. In dry season, however, wildlife congregates at watering holes and is easily spotted. Jaguars, margays, ocelots, pumas, and jaguarundis are here, but are seldom seen. Santa Rosa is a vitally important nesting site for ridleys and other turtle species.

The park is divided into two sections: the more important and accessible Santa Rosa Sector to the south (the entrance is at Km 269 on Hwy. 1, 37 km north of Liberia) and the Murciélago Sector (the turnoff from Hwy. 1 is 10 km farther north, via Cuajiniquil), separated by a swathe of privately owned land.

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Santa Rosa Sector
On the right, one km past the entrance gate, a rough dirt road leads to a rusting armored personnel carrier beside a memorial cross commemorating the Battle of 1955, when Somoza, the Nicaraguan strongman, made an ill-fated foray into Costa Rica.

Six km farther on the paved road is La Casona, a magnificent colonial homestead (actually, it’s a replica, rebuilt in 2001 after arsonists burned the original down) with a beautiful setting atop a slight rise overlooking a stone corral where the battle with William Walker was fought. Alas, the fire destroyed the antique furnishings and collection of photos, illustrations, carbines, and other military paraphernalia commemorating the battle of 20 March 1856. Battles were also fought here during the 1919 Sapoá Revolution and in 1955. Harmless bats fly in and out. The garden contains rocks with Indian petroglyphs.

Trails are marked in detail on the map sold at the park entrance. The Naked Indian loop trail (1.5 km) begins just before the house and leads through dry-forest woodlands with streams and waterfalls and gumbo-limbo trees whose peeling red bark earned them the nickname “naked Indian trees.” The Los Patos trail, which has several watering holes during dry season, is one of the best trails for spotting mammals.

The paved road ends just beyond the administration area. From here, a dirt road drops steeply to the beaches—Playa Naranjo and Playa Nancite, 13 km from La Casona. Negotiating this road takes good driving skills; A 4WD with high ground clearance is essential, but passage is never guaranteed, not least because the Río Nisperal can be impassable in wet season. Park officials sometimes close the road and will charge you a fee if you have to be hauled out.

The deserted white-sand Playa Nancite (about a one-hour hike over a headland from Estero Real, at the end of the dirt road) is renowned as the site for the annual arribadas, the mass nestings of olive ridley turtles which occur only here and at Ostional, farther south. More than 75,000 turtles will gather out to sea and come ashore over the space of a few days, with the possibility of up to 10,000 reptiles on the beach at any one time in September and October. Although the exact trigger is unknown, arribadas seem to coincide with falling barometric pressure in autumn and are apparently associated with a waxing three-quarter moon. You can usually see solitary turtles at other times August through December. Stephen E. Cornelius’s illustrated book The Sea Turtles of Santa Rosa National Park (Costa Rica: National Park Foundation, 1986) provides an insight into the life of the ridley turtle. Latest data suggests that the turtle population at Nancite is declining. Playa Nancite is a research site; access is restricted and permits are needed, though anyone can get one from the ranger station, or at Programa de Ecoturismo, c/o Centro de los Investigaciones (see below). There’s a limit of 30 people per day.

Playa Naranjo is a beautiful, kilometers-long, pale gray sand beach that is legendary in surfing lore for its steep, powerful tubular waves and for Witches Rock rising like a sentinel out of the water. The beach is bounded by craggy headlands and frequently visited by monkeys, iguanas, and other wildlife. Crocodiles lurk in the mangrove swamps at the southern end of the beach. At night, plankton light up with a brilliant phosphorescence as you walk the drying sand in the wake of high tide.

Playa Potrero Grande, north of Nancite, and other beaches on the central Santa Elena peninsula offer some of the best “machine-like” surf in the country, with double overhead waves rolling in one after the other. The makers of Endless Summer II, the sequel to the classic surfing movie, caught the Potrero Grande break perfectly. You can hire a boat at Jobo or any of the fishing villages in the Golfo Santa Elena to take you to Potrero Grande or Islas Murciélagos (Bat Islands), slung in a chain beneath Cabo Santa Elena, the westernmost point of the peninsula. The Bat Islands are a renowned scuba diving site for advanced divers; sharks (bull, tiger, and black-tip) are there in numbers, along with whale sharks.

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Murciélago Sector
The entrance to the Murciélago Sector of Santa Rosa National Park is 15 km west of Hwy. 1, 10 km north of the Santa Rosa Sector park entrance (there’s a police checkpoint at the turnoff; have your passport ready for inspection). The road winds downhill to a coastal valley through spectacularly hilly countryside to the hamlet of Cuajiniquíl, tucked half a kilometer south of the road, which continues northwest to Bahía Cuajiniquíl.

You arrive at a Y-fork in Cuajiniquíl: the road to Murciélago (eight km) is to the left. There are three rivers to ford en route. You’ll pass the old CIA training camp for the Nicaraguan contras on your right. The place—Murciélago Hacienda—was owned by the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza’s family before being expropriated in 1979, when the Murciélago Sector was incorporated into Santa Rosa National Park. It’s now a training camp for the Costa Rican police force. Armed guards may stop you for an ID check as you pass. A few hundred meters farther, the road runs alongside the “secret” airstrip (hidden behind tall grass to your left) that Oliver North had built to supply the contras. The park entrance is 0.5 km beyond the airstrip.

It’s another 16 km to Playa Blanca, a beautiful horseshoe-shaped white-sand beach—one of the most isolated in the country—about five km wide and enjoyed only by pelicans and frigate birds. The road ends here. Waterfalls are surrounded by ferns and palms in Cuajiniquil Canyon, which has its own moist microclimate. The Poza El General watering hole attracts waterfowl and other animals year-round and is reached along a rough trail.

Here you’ll find Ollie’s Point, named after Oliver North. “What Ollie probably never knew,” says surfer Peter Brennan, “is that just off the coast there’s a hot right point.”

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Information
The park entrance station (tel. 506/666-5051, ext. 219, 8 a.m.–4 p.m., $7 admission), at the Santa Rosa Sector sells maps showing trails and campgrounds. The park administration office (Apdo 169-5000, Liberia, tel. 506/666-5051, fax 506/666-5020, acg@acguanacaste.ac.cr, www.acguanacaste.ac.cr) can provide additional information.

The Dry Tropical Forest Investigation Center (Centro de los Investigaciones, Apdo. 169-5000 Liberia, tel. 506/666-5051, ext. 233), next to the administrative center near La Casona, undertakes biological research. It is not open to visitors.

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Getting There
Buses (tel. 506/256-9072) depart San José for La Cruz and Peñas Blancas from Calle 14, Avenidas 3/5, daily at 5 a.m., 7 a.m., 7:45 a.m., 1:20 p.m., and 4:10 p.m., passing the park entrance—35 km north of Liberia—en route to the Nicaraguan border (six hours). Buses depart Liberia for Santa Rosa and La Cruz from Avenida 5, Calle 14, at 5:30 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m. You’ll have to walk or hitchhike from the park entrance (seven km to La Casona and the park headquarters, another 13 km to Playa Naranjo).

Buses from La Cruz and Peñas Blancas pass the park en route to San José at 6:25 a.m., 8:15 a.m., 10:10 a.m., 1:30 p.m., 4:20 p.m., and 6 p.m.; and en route to Liberia at 12:30 p.m., 3:40 p.m., and 5:15 p.m.

Buses to Murciélago Sector depart La Cruz for Cuajiniquil at 5 a.m. and noon, and from Liberia for Cuajiniquil at 5:45 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. (returning at 7 a.m. and 4:45 p.m.). You can catch the Liberia–Cuajiniquil–La Cruz bus from the Santa Rosa entrance at 4 p.m. From Cuajiniquil you may have to walk the eight km to the park entrance.