Limon

Limon is the province of Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, which it follows from the border with Nicaragua to the border with Panama. Its capital, the port city of Limon, also called Puerto Limon, handles more freight than any other port in the country.

In September 1502, on his fourth voyage, Christopher Columbus anchored off Isla Uvita, the small island opposite today's city. From December 1872 workers from Jamaica arrived to build the railway, which joined Limon to San Jose in 1890, and the Afro-Caribbean culture they brought still shapes the province. The Limon Carnival, held every October since 1949, is its best-known celebration.

Much of its coast is protected. Tortuguero National Park, created in 1970, protects the most important nesting beach of the green turtle in the western hemisphere. To the south, Cahuita National Park guards the best-preserved coral reef on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, and the Gandoca-Manzanillo refuge reaches toward Panama beyond Puerto Viejo de Talamanca.

Inland, in the Talamanca mountains, the Bribri and Cabecar peoples live in their own indigenous territories.