Playa Lapa

Activities Playa Lapa Carate, Osa Peninsula Costa Rica

The Carate area offers one of the greatest variety of eco-tourism activities available anywhere on the entire Osa peninsula.  Perhaps its largest attraction is that it is less than one hour's walk from Corcovado National Park, the largest and most impressive of the Costa Rican national parks.   However, as guests at any of the area resort lodges will tell you, Carate is a destination in its own right.  Carate has miles of deserted sand beaches with wild Pacific surf and is one of the region's most significant turtle laying regions and has hosted turtle research facilities and investigators for years.  Besides the broad beaches, Carate is also famous for an abundance of waterfalls in the area and the brackish Pejeperrito Lagoon, whose waters extend up the slough at Playa Lapa.  Terrapin Lodge offers kayaks for enjoying the lagoon, and for those wanting to take a walk on the wild side offer crocodile viewing tours there at night.  Apart from its spectacular setting and the beauty of the beaches, jungle, mountains, and lagoon, Carate is also famous for its gold.  In 1939 it hosted one of only two offshore gold dredgeline operations in the entire world and to this day, hand miners can be observed working the Carate river regularly and the auriferous beaches following spring tides.  For guided tours sponsored from our friends at Terrapin Lodge, or for self-guiding kayak and horseback adventures, consider the following:

CORCOVADO DAY HIKE

Explore the La Leona entrance of Corcovado National Park with a bilingual naturalist guide.  Includes primary and secondary forest, river, beach, waterfall, and lots of animals.  $75 per person, full day

TREE CLIMBING

Reade Jordan is Carate's premier extreme sports outfitter.  Climb into the canopy over eighty feet in the air and enjoy the thrill of a zip line far above the jungle floor:  $75 per person, half day

WATERFALL RAPELLING

Rapell a Carate waterfall with CATS Adventure tours.  $75, half day.  Combo tree climb and waterfall rapelle, $125, full day.

BIRD WATCHING

With over 375 species in the Carate region and an avid bilingual naturalist with a telescope, you can't go wrong.  $50 half day

FISHING

Pejeperrito Lagoon is teeming with snook.  Depending on the phase of the moon and the time of the day, you can catch pan-sized and lunker snook in the lagoon and/or large snook, snapper, jack, and other inshore fish from the shore.  You need a guide to get the right bait and set you up right to catch your dinner or your prize photo or both.  $50 half day.

HORSEBACK RIDING

Horseback tours make the run all along Matapalo trails and beaches.  Extensive wildlife.  Gallop on a tropical beach.  daily.  $50 guided.  Self-guiding:  $30.  Three hours.

If organized tours are not your thing, just take off hiking up Shady Lane or in either direction along the beach or pick up a kayak at Terrapin and launch out on your own on Pejeperrito Lagoon. . . by land or water Carate is as full of alternatives as the imagination's reach. 

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