Cockscomb Basin

Established in 1986 and deriving its name from the nearby mountain ridge which (to some) resembles a roosters comb, Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary is 400 square kilometers of rainforest. One of its key reasons for creation was to preserve jaguar habitat, and it remains on of the premiere sites for these cats in the world.

With only a single morning of hiking near the entrance, it is unsurprising that this is as close to a jaguar as we got.

The park consists of two water basins (west and east) with access and trails getting more difficult the further west you venture. Wildlife highlights in our self-guided hike include coati, aracari, toucans and guans. There were also some tracks we believed to have been recently made by a tapir, but that was as close as we came to sighting one.

One guaranteed sighting in the park is this crashed plane, which occurred as a result of an attempted landing on an access road during a thunderstorm in the early 1980s. A researcher used this plane for tracking jaguars via radio collars to learn more about their behaviour before the park was formed, and it remained an artifact of his efforts when the park opened.

Fortunately, none of the pilot, photographer and researcher on board at the time were seriously injured in the crash.