Pavo · CR

Sirena Ranger Station

Sirena Ranger Station is the beating heart of Corcovado National Park on Costa Rica's remote Osa Peninsula, and for many wildlife travellers it is the single best place on the country's Pacific coast to see animals in the wild. Unlike the park's other ranger posts, which sit on its edges, Sirena lies in the interior basin, ringed on every side by unbroken primary rainforest, where rivers, beach, swamp and jungle crowd together and concentrate wildlife the way a waterhole does on the savanna. This is the spot that gave Corcovado its reputation as, in National Geographic's phrase, "the most biologically intense place on Earth." There is no road to Sirena. You arrive by boat along the coast, by a short charter flight onto the station's grass airstrip, or on foot after a long day's trek—always with a certified guide, since independent entry is not permitted anywhere in the park. What you find at the end of the landing is not a lodge but a working ranger post: weathered wooden buildings on stilts, linked by covered walkways, with open-air dorms, a dining hall, a small nature shop and a porch that has produced more tapir sightings than any formal hide. It is rough, humid and utterly unforgettable.