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La Riviera Hotel
Belen, Costa Rica
Reservations phone:
(506) 2293 0909
How to Get
fax:
(506) 2293 2582
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Palo Verde National
Park
This national park is made up of a mosaic of diverse
floodplain habitats, bordered by rivers and a ridge
of limestone hills. The Palo Verde area is subject
to seasonal floods of great magnitude due to its lack
of natural drainage. This produces a greater ecological
diversity-between 12 and 15 habitats have been identified.
These
habitats include salt and fresh water lakes and swamps,
grasslands with black mangroves, mangrove swamps,
pastures, lowland stunted forests, wooded savannas
and evergreen forests. The most conspicuous species
and the one from which the park takes its name is
the "palo verde" or horse bean, a leafy
bush with its branches and parts of its trunk colored
light green. The hills are home to an endemic species
of cactus. The lignum-vitae, a tree prized for its
wood and in imminent danger of extinction, is also
found here.
Palo
Verde's natural water system has created an environment
capable of supporting one of the largest concentrations
of waterfowl and wading birds, both native and migratory,
in the country and, in fact, in all of Central America.
The forests are the nesting grounds of the endangered
jabiru and home to the only colony of scarlet macaws
in the Dry Pacific.
Some
of the most abundant mammals are the howler and white-faced
monkeys, white-nosed coati, white-tailed deer, tree
squirrel and porcupine. Crocodiles up to five meters
long have been sighted in the Tempisque River. |
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