Playa Zancudo is a village in

Puntarenas Province Puntarenas () is a province of Costa Rica. It is located in the western part of the country, covering most of Costa Rica's Pacific Ocean coast, and it is the largest province in Costa Rica. Clockwise from the northwest it borders on the provinces ...

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

near the Golfo Dulce. It has a population of approximately 450.

Geography

It is located 9.5 kilometers south of

Golfito Golfito is a district and port town of the Golfito canton, in the Puntarenas province of Costa Rica, located on the southern Pacific Coast, near the border of Panama. Toponymy Literally translated as 'little gulf'. Geography Golfito has an ...

. Zancudo is located on a long and narrow peninsula, sometime only 100 yards wide, at the mouth of the Rio Colorado. On one side of the peninsula is Zancudo's beach, protected from the full force of

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

waves, while the other is home to a

mangrove swamp Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangroves cannot withstand fre ...

. The whole beach is 6 miles long, with the southern three miles of it having jungle and farmland on the east side and most of the town being located within the northernmost mile. The town of Playa Zancudo contains a school, several churches, a soccer field, some Tico restaurants and bars, three sportfishing areas, and a general store.

History

The area around

's port was developed by the

United Fruit Company The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas) grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 fro ...

in the 1930s. While this was happening, excess bananas that washed down the Rio Coto river came upon Playa Zancudo's beaches. During this time, pig farms thrived on the leftover bananas.

Americans Americans are the Citizenship of the United States, citizens and United States nationality law, nationals of the United States, United States of America.; ; Although direct citizens and nationals make up the majority of Americans, many Multi ...

began moving to Zancudo in the 1980s, with the rise in foreign settlement aiding the demise of pig farming in Zancudo.

Transportation

The nearest airport is in

. The dirt road which connects the community to nearby towns has daily bus service in and out of the town.

References

{{reflist Populated places in Puntarenas Province