English
Those who say that Puerto Jimenez has the air of a cowboy town, could not describe it better. It was born in the 60’s of the last century and, for leaving nothing to the originality, its importance was due to “gold rush”.
The Osa Peninsula jungle became the target of the mines of companies that came to remove wrinkles to extract gold – the era was and still is abundant and timber companies that aimed the use of precious woods.
To avoid such devastation, the State adopted protective measures, creating protected areas to avoid logging and prohibiting industrial mining. Instead, it authorized the artisanal exploitation of gold, to avoid that the workers were left without economic sustenance.
A turn towards the green gold
Many were adventurers who, when they accumulated a fortune, went out to the town to the last penny, and then returned to the causes of the rivers and streams. There is nothing more than in the health services of a bar in Puerto Jiménez, where you have to say “ladies” and “gentlemen”, said “oreros” and “oreras”.
But the state and the people who founded Puerto Jiménez and many other communities in the Osa Peninsula, observed that in order to improve their living conditions, it was better to protect nature, rather than to destroy it.
It was created by the National Park of Corcovado, considered in an article of the National Geographic magazine as the best natural park of the world and defined by the Foundation Netrópica – in the Good Water sector of Sierpe – like the most intensely biological place of the earth .
Also in the Peninsula are the Golfo Dulce Forest Reserve and the Piedras Blancas National Park.
Since then, Puerto Jiménez is the main center of population of the Peninsula, and meeting point for tourists, scientists and ecologists.
Puerto Jimenez is one of the main gateways to Corcovado National Park, but it also has a lot to offer among its wide tourist options.
