Costa Rica was the tenth country on our Americas adventure but the first that either of us had been to before. Cindy loved Costa Rica when she visited eight years ago, and the highlight of her previous trip, Puerto Viejo, was our first stop this time around.
Puerto Viejo is a small beach town on the Caribbean coast just north of the Panama border. Eight years ago Cindy fell in love with the town for its laid back Caribbean/Latino vibe and its long stretch of pretty beaches. This time around, Cindy couldn’t help but feel the relaxed vibe had been weakened by increased tourism traffic, and it was clear that recent storm activity had taken a toll on the beaches. Even so, we enjoyed some relaxed meals and a nice long bike ride along the coast before heading to our next destination, Manuel Antonio.
The Manuel Antonio national park has been named as one of the twelve most beautiful national parks in the world, and, in our experience, for good reason. The park is on the Pacific coast, which meant that we were in for a long day on slow buses, crossing coast to coast from Puerto Viejo via the capital. Lots of locals had said we wouldn’t be able to make it in one day, so when the bus pulled in to the town of Quepos (near the park entrance) at 6pm, we were very proud of ourselves for again ignoring the locals and backing our gut instinct. Unfortunately, we quickly went from feeling very smart to feeling very stupid when we realised that the national park was closed the next day. What looked like being our first really silly mistake proved to be a blessing, as we spent the entire following day on playa Espadilla, the long white sand beach neighbouring the park. Featuring the perfect combination of long gentle waves, tropical (but not too hot) temperatures, and jungle scenery (including the occasional monkey sighting), we both instantly agreed that playa Espadilla was the best beach either of us had visited anywhere in the world.
The Manuel Antonio national park is the most popular, the smallest, and by far the most crowd-affected national park in Costa Rica, so we woke up at 6am to ensure we were the first through the gates. Once inside the park, we didn’t have any trouble spotting exotic spiders, sloths and lots of monkeys. After stopping to take some photos of one of the park’s four stunning beaches, we looked up with amusement to see a family of monkeys getting stuck into what looked like tortillas. When our German friend discovered that the tortillas were in-fact her very expensive gluten free lunch, the expression on her face quickly changed, and we all undertook a panicked inspection of our bags to check that nothing else (especially camera equipment) had been pinched.
After wandering through all of the park’s walkways we arrived at its most iconic beach which, although stunning, was already overcrowded at 9:30am. After a quick swim we laid out our towels to attempt to relax on the beach, but were constantly interrupted by confident wildlife attempting to search our bags for food. When an anteater rubbed his nose all over our unsuspecting friend’s head, we decided it was time to leave the park and head back to the more relaxing and less populated (both by humans and animals) playa Espadilla.
After saying goodbye to our favourite beach we sat down for lunch at El Avion, a famous hilltop restaurant built around a hollowed-out cargo plane. We then picked up a rental car to drive to our next destination, Monteverde. Prohibitive (and back-packer unfriendly) costs had until now turned us off the idea of renting a car, but our research had shown that with Costa Rica’s network of largely dirt roads and frustratingly slow and indirect buses, the bus alternative was even less attractive. The advantage of hiring a car in Costa Rica over anywhere else we’d visited is that almost every part of the country offers beautiful scenery (whether costal or mountainous), and it was really nice being able to stop whenever we liked to take it in.
Monteverde, although notoriously hard to get to due to poorly maintained and rarely signposted dirt roads (we got badly lost on the way there), is as good a place as any to experience Costa Rica’s iconic cloud forests. The small town is increasingly popular among tourists, particularly birdwatchers who often spend a week patiently wandering through the nearby cloud forest reserves. We wouldn’t identify ourselves as either patient or birdwatchers, so for us a brisk 3-hour walk through the award winning Curi Cancha reserve was more than enough.
Monteverde, although notoriously hard to get to due to poorly maintained and rarely signposted dirt roads (we got badly lost on the way there), is as good a place as any to experience Costa Rica’s iconic cloud forests. The small town is increasingly popular among tourists, particularly birdwatchers who often spend a week patiently wandering through the nearby cloud forest reserves. We wouldn’t identify ourselves as either patient or birdwatchers, so for us a brisk 3-hour walk through the award winning Curi Cancha reserve was more than enough.
The main reason we visited Monteverde was to do the longest zipline in Costa Rica, and one of the longest in the world. In total we did 13 ziplines, the longest being a mile-long ‘superman’ style (facing the increasingly distant ground) that was a lot scarier than expected. The zipline tour included a tarzan canyon swing as a no cost option. Sam had done something similar in New Zealand but tried his hardest to underplay how scary it was when convincing Cindy to give it a try. The bungy-like adrenaline rush was a nice was to finish our time in Monteverde.
One of the reasons we opted to hire a car was that we wanted to explore some of Costa Rica’s northern pacific beaches before dropping the car off near the Nicaraguan border. All started well, as we arrived at the beautiful beach town of Samara for a seafood lunch on the sand. However, as we attempted to continue north to the next beach town we were faced with dirt roads in such bad condition that driving more than 40 kilometres an hour was impossible (even in a high ground clearance hired 4x4 with full insurance). Instead of paying $15 a day to rent a GPS we opted to take iPad screen shots of our preferred route, but we hadn’t anticipated that this route would have a river running through it. Just when we thought it the road conditions couldn’t get any worse, it started to get dark, 2 hours before scheduled sunset, and we were met with torrential rain so heavy that our headlights were reflecting off the rain and back into our faces. We soon decided to turn back, having to go through flooded roads but then reached a dead end as rivers of water meant we had no idea where the road continued. We tried another path, but it lead to another dead end. Eventually we were able to get out of there, back on to the main road and to our hotel at our next destination, Tamarindo, all be it a few hours after we had intended to arrive.
Tamarindo is a small town with a pretty, although not spectacular, beach. What we loved about the place, and the reason we ended up staying an extra night, was the relaxed vibe and the nice and affordable food. There are plenty of Costa Rican beach destinations catering to the backpacker crowd, and plenty more that exclusively host 5-star resorts, but we found that Tamarindo struck a nice balance between the two extremes. After three relaxed days chilling out on Tamarindo and neighbouring beaches, our two weeks in Costa Rica ended with us catching a series of chicken buses to the Nicaraguan border.