Drake Bay is a 180-degree contrast, a quiet kickback place with a climbing, rocky dirt road for a main drag, two little grocery stores on opposite sides of it, and a sprinkling of hostels, no-frills cabins, private rentals and small restaurants. The fancier lodges and eco-resorts, including luxurious all-inclusives, are tucked farther away in the jungle. There is no disco here, no museum, no boutique shops or galleries, just one or two beach vendors and a tiny souvenir store. Don’t expect to use a bank or ATM: There aren’t any. Bring a good stash of U.S. dollars or Costa Rican colones; locals accept both and may not take credit cards.

The up-and-down jungle trail I hike in the morning is a jewel. It leads across a short suspension bridge to a string of pretty coves and beaches. Well-prepared hikers (Sunscreen! Water! DEET!) can trek the path for hours one way. I smile when I spot a large steppingstone along the trail that reads: “Costa Rica, un pais de paz y amor.” It’s perfect. Costa Rica, the enlightened nation with no standing army, a literacy rate over 97 percent and about a quarter of its land under protection, is “a country of peace and love.” Yes!

The pace in Drake Bay is easy, evident in a hand-lettered sign advising visitors: “Go slow. You already are in paradise.” Slow is easy to do on the beach below, a long, uncrowded crescent of sand backing up on jungle. The protected water of Drake Bay — named for a 16th-century visitor named Sir Francis Drake — is warm, the surf gentle. Friendly town dogs wander the beach greeting old friends and new, rolling in the sand, splashing in the surf and chasing horses that, freed from saddles and reins, break into a full gallop across the open expanse.

Popping up everywhere around town are signs advertising tours for whale and dolphin watching, fishing, horseback riding, kayaking, birdwatching, hiking, and snorkeling and diving on nearby Cano Island. (Unfortunately for us, it’s December, and waters are still too murky to snorkel.)

One of the most unusual tours happens by night.

We meet up with Tracie, the Bug Lady, at dusk along the jungle trail. Tracie Stice has a degree in biology, with a specialty in entomology. Her husband, Gianfranco Gomez, who joins us, is a naturalist and photographer. For years, they’ve been documenting the nocturnal creatures of Drake Bay and introducing tourists to the animals’ wonderfully weird ways.

They give us headlamps and we head down the familiar path into an unfamiliar world of glow-in-the-dark fungi and spider eyeshine. We see pygmy rain frogs the size of a fingernail, giant walking sticks, millipedes that give off cyanide, gladiator tree frogs that fight to the death to protect their nests and a creepy tailless whip scorpion that Stice handles like a dear old friend.

Gomez charts the activity of bats with a detector that tracks their echolocation. They swoop above our heads like gray shadows as he explains that there are only three species of vampire bats in the world — “and all three are here.” A delicious chill runs down my spine. This, I think, is “nightlife” at its finest.

The ultimate, must-do tour here is an excursion to nearby Corcovado National Park, a pristine primary rain forest that occupies almost half the Osa Peninsula. The isolated park provides refuge for multitudes of animals and plants that might otherwise be extinct, including jaguars and pumas, Baird’s tapirs, giant anteaters and harpy eagles. It is, says one tour guide, a “different planet.”

Reservations are a must, made through hotels or private operators. You can’t go without a certified guide, and the number of daily visitors is strictly, thankfully, limited to protect wildlife. We choose a $90 one-day excursion with a guide, lunch at a ranger’s station and boat transportation.

The first thing he shows us are tapir tracks in the sand, the next a stern committee of redheaded turkey vultures, drying wings spread five feet wide on the beach. A raccoon-like coati-mundi pops up from the scrub, and lizard eyes follow us as we exit the sweltering beach and enter the shaded jungle, searching trees for toucans and macaws and exquisitely painted little birds, such as the black-throated trogon with its yellow breast and swanky, black-and-white patterned tail.

The rumble in the jungle begins as a distant, deep-throated roar. We follow the sound to a tree full of howler monkeys. The leaves shudder as they jump from branch to branch, mamas carrying their young on their backs, papas hooting and whooping. Excited visitors clump below, pointing up and mesmerized.

Before the day is done, with our guide’s trained eye, we will have seen all four species of Costa Rican monkeys: the howlers, white-faced capuchins, squirrel monkeys and spider monkeys that stage an attempted takeover of a toucan tree. The birds shriek in protest. It’s a raucous day in the wild.

Some seven hours after we came ashore, we splash back into the water and board the boat home, happy and tired. Soon, frigates and kites are wheeling above us and flying fish with wings like glass leap along the boat’s sides. I study Corcovado’s protected shores as we pass: all those empty beaches, all that crazy life teeming in the jungles behind them. The scene stretches on for mile upon mile.

I close my eyes, overcome with a sense of relief and gratitude. For here, on this untrampled peninsula, in a country of love and peace, in a world slowly paving over, there is still a place for the wild things.

Lyke is a writer based in Washington state. Her website is marylynnlyke.com.