After our amazing week on the Nicoya Peninsula, we were very excited about exploring the Osa Peninsula. As described to us by a Costa Rican, it is a “more beautiful” version of the Nicoya.
You can’t drive around the entire Osa Peninsula (hugging the coast) the way we did on the Nicoya. There is a giant national park — Corcovado — that doesn’t have any roads that takes up about a third of the area of the peninsula (it sits on the south-western side of the Peninsula). There are two ways to access Corcovado; from the north and from the south. Our first day on the Osa we set our sights on Drake Bay, near the northern access point to Corcovado.
The drive to Drake Bay is absolutely beautiful, but the road is pretty rough, especially during rainy season. Get ready for beautiful scenery and some river crossings.
We had about 7 river crossings on our drive out to Drake Bay (and beyond).
We also passed a lot of agricultural areas.
Our friends Toby & Chloe got stuck on the wrong side of a river for about 6 hours after a huge rain storm while visiting this area of the Osa just a few days after we did.
Horses handle the potholes on this road a little bit better than the XP :)
Our third major river crossing of the day. Last picture of the XP crossing a river, I promise!
In our search for a camp site, we continued past Drake Bay and just kept driving until the road ended near a soccer field and a few houses. The beach was only a hundred feet away, but some big pillars in the road prevented us from driving further. In the end, we made it to the beach when a Costa Rican allowed us to drive across his property to a spot right by the sand.
Playa San Josecito
A view of our camping spot from the beach.
This was a stunning beach that we had to ourselves and good to swim in but the water was so warm it felt warmer than the air. I wish it was colder so we could cool off.
The view down the beach from our pirate camping spot.
Scarlet Macaws were everywhere, landing on nearby trees to eat and check-out the XPCamper.
This scarlet macaw takes a break from eating fruit to check out the front of my camera lens.
It was wonderful to be in such a beautiful place at the end of a long day of driving on rough roads. We jumped in the bathtub-warm water at the end of the day while enjoying a spectacular sunset.
Erica takes an evening swim during the sunset.
Price of this camping spot? Free!
I wish I could say that everything was perfect, but unfortunately after the sunset the bugs came out. Little biting sand fleas let us know that while the scenery here was tough to beat, we’d be ready to move on the next day and explore a new part of the Osa Peninsula.