Located in one of the beautiful regions of Costa Rica, Gandoca Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge is set in the south-eastern tip of the Caribbean slope. If you want adventure, fun, nature and wildlife in your travel, there’s no other place better than this. The place is surrounded by the Sixaola River at the Panamanian border to the east. The mesmerizing view would dazzle and relax you with view of row of mountains, rich colorful coral reefs of Caribbean Sea and sandy beach getting washed in the calm green ocean.

Gandoca- Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge (called Regama) is a place where visitors to attracted to see the nature’s broad spectrum of cultural, ethnical and ecological diversity on the Costa Rican areas. Regama is comprised of 5013 land mass hectares and 4436 marine hectares. In other words, you could say that seventy percent of Regama belongs to the Southern Caribbean region and thirty percent to other attractive regions like Black beach, Cocles, Old Harbor and so on. Apart from these species, this refuge contains more than 500 marine and freshwater species and over 350 birds. This contains a unique habitat reserve that includes a 10 kilometer beach strip, a 740 acre forest, a coral reef and 2 swamps.
The wetlands are represented as the land ecosystems in the refuge. These surrounding wetlands contains great diversity of species like crocodiles, alligators, wild bores, pumas, pacas, sloths, spiders, monkeys, birds, reptiles, amphibians and so on. This surrounding beauty is enhanced with the Refuges marine costal area like coral reef, sandy beaches, and brackish creeks mangroves, fossil lined coral caves, varying marine floors from slit to sand to rock to coral. These areas contain five types of coral reefs and such species and plants that are not found elsewhere. It includes rare habitats like a wetland, a lowland rainforest and a mangrove swamp that is the only left intact mangrove swam across Atlantic.

In addition to this, the refuge was established to protect the flora and the fauna of the region. This is an important need in order to protect the species from extinction. This refuge can be classified as a humid tropical rainforest that looks after the only natural mangrove oyster beds found along the reefs of the coast. According to the research, species that were not found elsewhere belonging to this category are 11 types of sponges, 27 types of algae, 34 types of mollusks, 4 types of sea turtles that lay eggs and are being endangered (i.e. the leatherback, Green hawksbill and loggerhead).

It is believed that the region contained more native people in the past, but with the arrival of Afro-Caribbean people that population has itself revolutionized bringing in practices like developed agricultural activity. These new colonized people live harmoniously believing that this local reserve had called them back up to the mountains and protect the refuge. This place contains in the beauty and is an absolute natural gem for nature lovers and scientists.