National Parks

SANTA ROSA

Area:
37,217 Terrestrial Ha.
78,000 Maritime Ha.

This park is located in the Guanacaste Province, 36 Km north of Liberia.

This is one of the country's most important historic areas. The ranch house "La Casona" and the stone corrals witnessed the nation's greatest heroic deed: the Battle of Santa Rosa which took place on March 20th, 1856.

The beautiful Nancite and Naranjo Beaches are major nesting grounds for the olive ridley, leatherback and Pacific green sea turtles. Nancite is where the largest "arribadas" of olive ridley turtles in tropical America come ashore.

There are ten habitats, including savannas, consisting of jaragua grassland and various trees such as the live oak, shoemaker's tree and rough-leaf tree, among others.

The deciduous forests contains some 240 species of trees and shrubs; among them Costa Rica's National Tree, the Guanacaste or ear tree, gumbo-limbo and mayflower. In the evergreen forest the dominant species are locust, chicle, oak, tempisque and bitter wood.

The fauna is rich and diverse as well. More than 155 species of mammals have been identified, more than half of which are bats. There are also 253 species of birds, 100 of amphibians and reptiles, and over ten thousand types of insects, including some 3,140 species of butterflies and moths.

The most conspicuous mammals are the howler and white-faced monkeys, armadillo, white-tailed deer, white-nosed coati, collared peccary, raccoon and the spiny pocket mouse, which is the most abundant of all.

Some of the birds found include the magpie jay, orange-fronted parakeet, elegant trogan, rufous-naped wren, crested caracara, great curassow, common black hawk and long-tailed manakin.