Area de Conservación Guanacaste

This was my very first postcard from Costa Rica and it was sent by Marco.

Cabo Santa Elena, Santa Rosa National Park

Santa Rosa National Park, in Spanish the Parque Nacional Santa Rosa, is a national park, in Guanacaste Province, northwestern Costa Rica. It was the first national park established in Costa Rica, created in 1971.

It is part of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste World Heritage site, originally created to protect the scene of the Battle of Santa Rosa. It is also within the larger national Guanacaste Conservation Area.

Santa Rosa National Park was also created to protect the natural environment beyond the historical site.

Ten unique natural habitats are within in the park. They include savannas, deciduous forest, marshlands, and mangrove woodlands.

Fauna includes coyotes, peccaries, white-nosed coatis, Baird's tapirs, sea turtles, and terrestrial turtles. The three species of monkey are Geoffroy's spider monkey, mantled howler and white-headed capuchin. - in: wikipedia

Cocos Island National Park

By the time I was doing this post I was ill. I had fever, my body was hurting and I was sneezing and coughing all the time. And I was absolutely sick of the Swiss winter and wishing to be in Costa Rica!

Islet Manuelita

This postcard was sent by Steffi

Cocos Island (Spanish: Isla del Coco) is an island designated as a National Park off the shore of Costa Rica, that does not allow inhabitants other than Costa Rican Park Rangers. It constitutes the 11th of the 13 districts of Puntarenas Canton of the province of Puntarenas. It is located in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 550 km (342 mi) from the Pacific shore of Costa Rica. With an area of approximately 23.85 km² (9.21 sq mi), about 8 km × 3 km (5 mi × 2 mi) and a perimeter of around 23.3 km (14.5 mi), this island is more or less rectangular in shape.

Surrounded by deep waters with counter-currents, Cocos Island is admired by scuba divers for its populations of hammerhead sharks, rays, dolphins and other large marine species. The extremely wet climate and oceanic character give Cocos an ecological character that is not shared with either the Galápagos Archipelago or any of the other islands (e.g., Malpelo or Coiba) in this region of the world. - in: wikipedia