guanacaste costa rica

The Guanacaste province is for the active soul, drawing visitors with its beaches and bird watching, horseback riding and mountain lake windsurfing. Forming the eastern border are a group of volcanoes that form the Cordillera de Guanacaste and Cordillera de Tilarán.

Visitors can hike to their summits, where there are dense forests with jaguars and tapirs. From the mountains flow various rivers that roll down and form an alluvial plain drained by the Río Tempisque, which empties into the Golfo de Nicoya.

The name Guanacaste is derived from quahnacaztlan, a native word for the guanacaste tree, which is Costa Rica’s national tree. With a new airport at Liberia, tourism to Guanacaste has boomed. Most sites are off the Pan-American Highway (Hwy. 1), which is scenic in its own right, moving northwest through Guanacate and continuing almost to the Nicaraguan border. If traveling by bus, make sure to sit on the right hand side when traveling northbound, the views of the volcanoes are superb

guanacaste costa rica

Extensión: 10.140,7 km2
(Segunda provincia en tamaño: 20% del territorio nacional)
Area: 3,917.1 mi2
(Second province in size: 20% of national area)

Población: 264.474
Population: 264,474
Densidad de población: 26,1 habitantes por km2
Population density: 67.5 per square mile

Lugares de interés / Attractions:
Playas / Beaches: Tamarindo, Sámara, Flamingo, Playa Hermosa, Playas del Coco, Montezuma.
Ciudad Folclórica de Santa Cruz (National Folklore City)
Ciudad Colonial de Nicoya (Colonial City)
Poblados ceramistas Guaitil y San Vicente (Native Ceramic towns)
Museo del Sabanero / Cowboy Museum
Museo de Arte Religioso de la Ermita de Nuestro Señor de la Agonia (Religious Art Museum)
Museo Histórico La Casona, Santa Rosa (Historical Museum)
Ecomuseo de las Minas de Abangares (Ecological Museum)
Museo Regional de Arte Chorotega (Regional Archaeology Museum)
Parque Nacional Barra Honda (National Park)
Parque Nacional Palo Verde (National Park)
Parque Nacional y Volcán Rincón de la Vieja (National Park and Volcano) (Guanacaste, Alajuela)
Parque Nacional Santa Rosa (National Park)
Parque Nacional Marino las Baulas (Hatchback Turtle Marine National Park)
Refugio de Fauna Silvestre Ostional (Wildlife Refuge)
Refugio Nacional de Fauna Silvestre Isla Bolaños (Wildlife Refuge)
Lomas Barbudal Reserva Biológica (Biological Reserve)
Parque Nacional Palo Verde (National Park)
Estación Biológica Palo Verde (Biological Research Station)
Refugio de vida Silvestre Bahía Junquillal (Wildlife Refuge)
Refugio de vida Silvestre Bosque Diriá (Wildlife Refuge)
Refugio de vida Silvestre Bahía Camaronal (Wildlife Refuge)
Reserva Biológica Privada La Pacífica (Private Biological Reserve)
Reserva Biológica Isla de Pájaros (Biological Reserve)
Area Conservación Guanacaste / Guanacaste Conservation Area
Ex-Hacienda Murciélago

Ciudad Principal / Main City: Liberia
Condiciones geográficas y meteorológicas:
Altura: 144 msnm
Temperatura promedio: 27,1°C
Precipitación Anual: 1.500 - 2.O00 mm.

The Guanacaste idea - guanacaste costa rica
American Forests, Nov-Dec, 1994 by David Tenenbaum

Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with Furl.net. It's free! Save it.The stakes are high and time is short as scientists try to create a living, working, profitable ecosystem in what is being called the largest restoration project ever attempteed in the tropics.

ON A TORRID PLATEAU between a string of volcanoes and the Pacific Ocean, Julio Diaz kneels, brushes aside some leaves and grass, and spills water from a canteen. Instantly, dozens of minute brown seeds begin writhing, propelled by a corkscrewing motion of their beards. As Diaz stands, he explains that these seeds of "jaragua" grass are pushing themselves into the ground for protection against the parching tropical sun.

Jaragua is a popular pasture grass that has adapted perfectly to the seasonally dry climate here in Guanacaste Province. With a great deal of help from range fires, jaragua is crowding out the few remaining scraps of dry tropical forest in northwestern Costa Rica.

And that makes this aggressive grass public enemy No. 1, as far as Diaz, the fire-crew chief at the Guanacaste Conservation Area, is concerned.

Five centuries ago, a magnificent dense forest covered more than 200,000 square miles of Pacific coastal lowlands from Panama to Central Mexico. Today, after centuries of timber cutting, farming, and ranching, only about one one-thousandth of that area is still recognizable, and only a few hundred square miles are in preserves.