Bosque del Cabo

At the tip of the Osa Peninsula at Cabo Matapalo, one of the most ecologically diverse and least disturbed corners of Central America, Bosque del Cabo occupies a clifftop position above the Pacific where primary rainforest meets the ocean and the wildlife corridor with Corcovado National Park — described by National Geographic as the most biologically intense place on earth — is immediately adjacent. The 17 cabins, villas, and bungalows are positioned at various points across the 750-acre private reserve, with the clifftop cabins providing the most dramatic ocean views and the forest cabins giving the closest access to the primary forest’s nocturnal and diurnal wildlife. The reserve’s primary forest has been protected from logging since the property was established in the 1970s, giving the canopy its full ecological maturity.

Guided walks in the reserve and Corcovado, night tours tracking tree frogs, caimans, and ocelots in the forest streams, kayaking in the tidal estuaries where crocodiles and river otters share the mangrove channels, and whale and dolphin watching off Matapalo’s headland are the core activities. The remoteness of the Osa Peninsula — accessible by small plane or four-wheel drive on dirt roads — gives the experience a quality of genuine wilderness arrival that is increasingly difficult to achieve in Central America’s more accessible destinations. Dining draws on the extraordinary local seafood of the southern Pacific and the organic produce of the Osa’s small farming communities.

Bosque del Cabo’s conservation contribution is expressed through fifty years of primary forest protection, the reserve’s ongoing monitoring of jaguar, tapir, and harpy eagle populations, and its support for the Osa Conservation Area’s biological corridor work, which seeks to maintain the forest connection between the Osa Peninsula’s protected areas and the Chirripó highlands to the north.