Qualla: Pacuare River

Pacuare River: Introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Autentico Adventures Costa Rica, CC BY-SA 3.0. February 1981. Four paddlers - Nick Hershenow, Sharon Hester, Jerry Kaufman, and Rudy Koller - put a twelve-foot Avon Redshank raft into a river that no commercial outfitter had ever run. They divided the Pacuare into upper and lower sections starting at a bridge crossing, and five days later they flagged down a narrow-gauge train to ride back to San Jose. A few months earlier, Polish kayakers had become the first to run the river at all, threading its rapids on their way from Central to South America. Within a year, commercial trips began. Within a decade, the Pacuare had earned its reputation as one of the five finest whitewater rivers in the world. The rainforest that walls in the gorges has never been cut.

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Image: Autentico Adventures Costa Rica | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pacuare River: 108 Kilometers From the Mountains to the Sea

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Autentico Adventures Costa Rica, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Pacuare begins in the Cordillera de Talamanca and flows approximately 108 kilometers to the Caribbean. Along the way it drops through roughly sixteen distinct sections, though rafters and kayakers typically run three: the Upper Upper, the Upper, and the Lower. The Upper Upper...

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Image: Autentico Adventures Costa Rica | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pacuare River: The Dam That Never Was

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grez, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1986, Costa Rica's state-owned electricity agency, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, proposed a hydroelectric dam on the Pacuare. For nearly two decades the plan lingered as a possibility, casting a shadow over the river's future. Rafting companies that had built th...

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Image: Grez | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pacuare River: Jaguars in the Gorge

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Autentico Adventures Costa Rica, CC BY-SA 3.0. The rainforest flanking the Pacuare is first-generation growth - it has never been logged. That distinction matters, because old-growth tropical forest supports a complexity of life that secondary growth takes centuries to rebuild. Jaguars have been spotted near the Huacas River ...

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Image: Autentico Adventures Costa Rica | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pacuare River: Wings and Color Through the Mist

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Autentico Adventures Costa Rica, CC BY-SA 3.0. The chestnut-mandibled toucan appears most reliably when rain or fog softens the air, its oversized bill cutting through the gray like a flag. Blue morpho butterflies - electric blue and impossible to photograph in flight - drift above the water on the calmer stretches. Parakeets...

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Image: Autentico Adventures Costa Rica | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pacuare River: The Outfitters Who Built an Industry

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pigment-Ink, CC BY-SA 4.0. Michael Kaye started Costa Rica Expeditions in 1978, and by the winter of 1981-82 he was running commercial trips on the Pacuare - making his company among the first to take paying customers down the river. Rafael Gallo, a former Kaye employee, gathered four rafts and founded Rio...

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Image: Pigment-Ink | CC BY-SA 4.0