GOLFITO

city, southern Costa Rica. It is located on sheltered El Golfito Inlet, off the Gulf of Dulce and surrounded by steep hills. The heavy rainfall supports a tropical rain forest vegetation similar to that of the Caribbean coast. Built in the 1930s, when disease forced the shifting of banana cultivation from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, Golfito was until the 1980s primarily a banana port, belonging to the Banana Company of Costa Rica. Oil palm is now the major crop in the area. The port handles about one-fifth of Costa Rica's seaborne trade, following the nation's other important ports, Limn and Puntarenas, in total traffic. A highway leads from the city to the Pan-American Highway. Pop. (1983 est.) 30,148.