And if the photos of monkeys and toucans from the Costa Rica’s parks were not enough here is a short video
A short video
Category Archives: Costa Rica
Imagine
Imagine a country with no army. A peaceful country. People smile and salute you on the street, everybody seem content and engage in relaxed conversations. The suspicion and the oblique look that you may get in other places of the world is inexistent here. The travelers’ occasional cautious questions or reactions are answered by a shrug and another smile making them feel uncomfortable for their lack of trust. This is Costa Rica.
This inviting social climate made lots of expats to make Costa Rica their home. They moved here, bought property converted in comfortable bed and breakfast places highly rated on the rental sites. In Palo Seco, a place close to Paritta that has a deserted 10km beach at the Pacific (yes, you read it correctly, 10Km) we met Bernard who moved 20 years ago from Montpellier, France, owner of “Beso del Viento”. He said that still goes once a year to France where he has family but not more often because “the French are so different than the people from here”. And he continued: “these people of Costa Rica are so relaxed because this country never had a war. Just cross the border into Nicaragua and you’ll see right away the difference”.
Costa Rica was fortunate to be ruled by some remarkable personalities. In 1949 president José Figueres Ferrer abolished the military making Costa Rica one of the few countries in the world without an army. Without a standing army the classical “banana” coups could not happen and the country remained relatively stable till today. Ferrer began implementing a number of significant public health programs that were continued later by Dr. Oscar Arias Sanchez with the creation of a national health insurance program. Oscar Arias was able to expel the American forces fighting the Contras from Costa Rica’s territory and bring peace to Central America that won him the Nobel Peach Prize. He also promoted initiatives to protect Costa Rica’s biodiversity and natural resources, the country becoming a leader in eco-tourism.
Comparing with the other Central American countries wrecked by dictatorial regimes where people leave flooding the Texas border, Costa Rica has a program where people come on a 5-year visa to work in the US. In Costa Rica it seems that everybody speaks English, no matter the level of education making my efforts to brush off my Spanish harder. Internet is everywhere. In every place you go you may find the Wifi network listed on tables and even the smallest coffee stand on the side of the road is eagerly sharing with you their network. A happy nation creates a happy environment for everybody and the result is that Costa Rica is flooded by tourists from all over.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Manuel Antonio
Who was Manuel Antonio? The moment you start researching about Costa Rica Manuel Antonio National Park pops up. And of course you may have asked yourself who was Manuel Antonio but you brush it off knowing that somehow you’ll find out. But surprise, surprise; nobody knows for sure who this guy was. There are half baked stories about a conquistador documented nowhere or a peasant that used to hang out in this land sometimes in history. But that’s it!
But irrelevant of “who-was-Manuel-Antonio” the national park is for sure one of the most interesting and charming in the entire country. It is full of animals out of which the capuchin monkeys keep the show alive, jumping on tree branches or sitting on poles by the path, crossing the alleys to go and drink water from the faucet.
Their serious demure is in total contrast with the excited and loud behavior of the tourists waving their cameras and iPhones. It makes you wonder what makes a zoo: the animals or the visitors!
Even if Manuel Antonio is one of the smallest parks it may keep you there an entire day with so many monkey tribes coming unafraid close to the visitors. Probably for this reason, at the entrance of the park all bags are checked to contain no trace of any sort of food.
Manuel Antonio National Park covers an area of approximately 4,014 acres and is home of 300 species of birds, 109 species of mammals, and 184 species of reptiles and amphibians.
Located in a narrow peninsula the park is surrounded by inviting beaches. If you get bored of so many monkeys you can switch on watching iguanas who may trample on the beach towels trying your sunglasses or maybe even peeking through your book.
It all depends of how much time you want to spend on searching for animals and birds because all are there and if you are just a bit patient they will come your way: toucans, sloth, aguati, deer, howling and spider monkeys, etc.
The national park does not have its own parking and on the way people dressed in ranger clothing try to steer you to their paid parking places offering guided tours in the park. They are un-official and the park administration put a notice advising you to avoid them and come to the park’s entrance where using an electronic system you can buy your ticket. But while you’ll walk to the park entrance you’ll realize for the first time how crowded this park is.
There are hordes and hordes of people. I never encounter so many people in any other park in Costa Rica. And all these people will flood after the park closes the hotels and restaurants of Manuel Antonio town that stretches with other restaurants, hotels, resorts and bars on several kilometers.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Jaco
From Monteverde seem that everybody was going to the Pacific. The roads to Monteverde are terrible and all guidebooks mention that you need a 4X4 to navigate them. For sure it is not the case, neither a high clearance vehicle is not needed but when you drive from Arenal towards Monteverde the last 40 km are in the worst possible shape and the speed will rarely exceed 20-25km/hour. The crater-type-holes that are on that portion of the road you may find also, fewer and far between, on the road toward the Pacific Coast. But suddenly the road improves and you find yourself in Jaco, a surfing town on the Pacific Coast, veiled in a spectacular sunset.
The Pacific Coast towns of Costa Rica don’t look so nice as the Caribbean side. They are more like large towns than villages with unappealing constructions, large roads, lots of traffic and noise. You can stay away to these town centers by walking on the beach, a long and flat golden blanket where the tide brings a thin film of sea water that washes the sand a large distance from the ocean’s waves. And you can walk and walk wallowing in this almost invisible layer of water, coming and going but seeming to be there all the time. Our walk after sunset was probably the most enjoyable walk we ever did on any other beach and it kept us going till the dark engulfed everything around.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Birds’ paradise
Besides the three main cloud forest reserves around Monteverde it is one park that is lesser advertised but for sure a charm in terms of watching Costa Rica birds. A quieter reserve located at a lower altitude with less clouds, Kuri Kancha Reserve a place converted from a farm populated not long ago by cows. The owner let himself to be convinced to switch from farming to bird watching wondering who would come to see them. But his bet paid off and today the park is full of tourists looking spellbound to the diversity of “aves”. The main treat that we had was a parade of quetzals, pretty rare and not so in-your-face according to the local guides. If this was true or now I don’t know but the show they put for us was for sure a magnet that brought all the people in the park around a tree where the quetzals were hanging out.
The quetzal, is a sort of “fancy tail-feathered diva” of the bird world. This bird is so fabulous, that it looks right out a bird fashion show.
It has bright green and red plumage and a long tail on the male quetzal. But the quetzal isn’t just all show and no substance. It’s found in mountainous cloud forests, where it uses its strong bill to crack open fruits and berries flying all over the canopy layer of the forest to find the best snacks.
The quetzal does an elaborate courtship displays with his resplendent plumage, the male performing seriously acrobatic moves to win over his lady. There are six species of quetzals that exist in the world today, which are found in Central and South America with a vary population.
The most numerous is the Eared Quetzal, which is found in Mexico and parts of Central America. Other species of quetzals, such as the Resplendent Quetzal, are more rare but overall, quetzals are considered to be threatened or near-threatened due to habitat loss, hunting, etc.
Kuri Kancha Park in Costa Rica has it all. There are lots of trails and it may take a good half day to hike the surrounding trail of the park. It has a waterfall, secret swimming holes and a river, a garden that all teem with birds and other animals.
Because the quetzal were putting the show everybody focused on them but in the tree were lots of turkey and nearby hummingbirds picking pollen from bushes of all colors.
On the park trails are gigantic ficus trees, the strangled tree that emptied its inside leaving the new growth to surround it. Besides banana tree and occasionally small coffee plantations. This park is a treat and it should not be missed. And we found out about it just by chatting with some Germans who had only one day in Monteverde but this is the only place they wanted to visit.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Up in the clouds
Three hours away from Arenal you enter the magic land of the cloud forest. Even the road you drive to get there, badly maintained with lots of holes and most of the time on dirt is shrouded in a mysterious fog. Low-hanging clouds hover on top of the forest canopy their humidity condensing onto the leaves of trees creating a continuous drip on the plants below. You are surrounded by a vague fog and you feel that the sky came down upon you making you walk through the clouds.
There are three main parks around this cloud forest. Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve created in 1972, the Santa Elena Cloud Forest created in 1989 and the Eternal Children Cloud Forest created with the money raised by Swedish children who were able to conserve 22500 ha of forest accessible in 3 locations.
The better known and the most crowded is Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. We chose to hike St Elena Forest Reserve that feels to be a bit higher and cloudier and where the hikes are longer. Cano Negro hike, a bit muddy in places is a 5-km trail that surrounds the reserve. It’s so secluded that in our hike we met only one other person- a German deep in meditation. The only thing you could hear in our walk was the dripping of condense from the cloud and few occasional birds. The rest, total silence.
Because of the bit higher elevation and lower temperature it feels that there are fewer animals in the cloud forest that in the ones at lower altitude. Hiking in Santa Elena was probably one of the best and most memorable hikes we ever did. We felt that we had the entire forest to ourselves.
Near St Elena Forest Reserve is an entrance to the Children’s Forest (Mondo Joven). Unfortunately in order to enter that section of the park you need a previous reservation done in the town of St Elena. For the afternoon hike we chose a different section of the Children’s Forest, a drier one that is called Bajo del Tigre and is located in Monteverde. It’s at a lower elevation (though no clouds) and it was full of monkeys and Agouti, a rodent very important in spreading the seeds in the forest.
Everywhere in Monterverde area there are advertised lots of forest night walks. We took one in SantaMaria with mixed results. The experience, if this is what you are looking for, is pretty cool, a bit spooky but overall nice. In terms of finding nocturnal animals it was a hit and miss with few results. But you do it once and that’s it.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Fortuna
In Central America, Guatemala is the place where you can easily encounter the preserved traditions of the indigenous communities. The markets teem with locals dressed in traditional clothes, an explosion of colors and models that amaze the mind and enchant the eye. Besides, traditional weavings and intricate woodwork of a remarkable quality are on sale preserving an inherited tradition of local crafts. In comparison Costa Rica and Panama look so developed and modern that you may think that their indigenous communities were practically culturally eradicated.
But in Costa Rica there are 24 indigenous communities out of which only four preserve their traditions. These are the Cabecar – BriBri is closely related to them – , Guaymi, Nobes in the south of the country and Maleku in the north. I went to the BriBri village, part of the Cabecar culture that displayed its intricate cosmological universe mapped on the shaman’s hut. The Maleku tribe is located in the Arenal area. It also known as the Maléku JaÃka and it has about a 650 people. They preserve a rich cultural tradition speaking a language that is part of the Chibchan language family. Their location is easily accessible and they welcome visitors in their village offering explanations about their tribal culture and tradition.
Last stop before we left the Arenal area was the Fortuna waterfall. Fed by the Arenal river the waterfall is part of another private park of the Arenal National Park. You have to drive few kilometers from La Fortuna town to reach the park where a walk down on 500 steps will bring you to a clear pool of water 200 feet below. The crystal clear water is full of large fish schools that sit tight and move slightly only to avoid the tourists feet that dive into the clear pool surrounded by lush green vegetation.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Volcano
The better advertised hi in the Arenal area is the one in “Arenal 1968”, a private park built around the lava eruption of that year. It has basically one hike for its steep $25 entrance fee. The park’s flyer shows three hikes but actually the other two are just short cuts of the main trail. It is a nice hike that may take 3 hours of relaxed pacing on lava rocks. The trail’s peak offers great views to the volcano.
If you are lucky you may see a sloth climbing the trees but for sure you’ll find lots of ants trails, tiny highways built in the jungle by the industrious ants carrying leaves that have a fungus they need for nutrition. Beside the carrier-ants there are the QC-ants that check if the fungus is the right one otherwise rejecting the load and the soldier-ants that may crawl on your legs stinging if you disturb the tasks at hand.
The trail circles a lake where you may see some birds…
… ending at an elegant cafeteria where you can relax drinking a smoothie and watching the volcano.
Nearby is another park, Arenal Eco Park, with another entrance fee whose trail goes to the lava of the last eruption of 2010. The trail is nice, not difficult and the return trail is even more interesting going through jungle. However one park on the Arenal slope is enough, either one you pick.
The cool stuff – actually the hot stuff – nearby all these parks are the hot springs. There is no entrance fee only you pay a small tip to a guy to watch your car. Take your towel and descend into the river that would tumble its warm waters over you. You can sit there and just relax for the rest of the day surrounded by talks in all European languages.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Coatis and monkeys
Costa Rica has about 60 national parks. For a small country is an amazing success in conservation. However not all parks in Costa Rica are owned by the government. Many are shared by the government with the local communities and a lot others are private. They evolved from extensive farms converted in protected parks once the tourists started to come. And the change paid handsomely converting an old economy of coffee and bananas into one of tourism.
The entire Arenal Volcano area falls under Arenal National Park. But the parks around the Arenal Volcano seem all to be private. Their entrance fee is steep for parks with only one hike that may take 2-3 hours max. But the “Mistico Park of Hanging Bridges” in Arenal is probably one of the better ones. The company that developed it built a two-mile trail through the jungle with 16 bridges out of which 6 are hanging over deep ravines or rivers. Some are as tall as 148 feet and confer great views over the volcano and the jungle.
The park is teeming with animals with lots of coati that roam the places were the tourists hang out looking for food. If you see them in the forest in groups are mainly females with their cubs, the males being excluded because they tend to kill the cubs. So the females keep them away squeaking menacingly to the approaching male who will roam alone the forests.
The quietude of the forest is pierced by the howling of the Congo monkeys (black face monkeys), more of a bark than a howl, whose presence is easily detected by the flutter of the tree leaves above and the broken twigs that may fall close to your head. Besides them the white face capuchin monkeys, toucans and lots of other birds add to the jungle mix.
Our home was in Encanto Arenal Lodge a splendid location owned and managed by an animated Jonathan whose every second sentence was “Pura Vida”. In Costa Rica there are few “Good Morning”, “Good bye”, “Thank you” or “How are you”. Most are substituted by “Pura Vida” and the locals live accordingly with this greeting. The lodge has rooms with a full glass wall facing the volcano where you can lie in bed in the afternoon watching the clouds descending on the volcano’s slopes.
For more on Costa Rica click here
SJO
No matter how you may spin it San Jose is not a lovely city. It has lots of squares and the one in front of the Post Office building is probably the most attractive even if not listed as such in the guidebooks. Otherwise its center is a grid of pedestrian commercial streets covered in merchandise lined up on the pavement and sunk in a cacophony of yelling and screaming from the vendors trying to out-loud each other.
Commercialism is augmented but surprisingly on quieter tones in the pleasant Mercado Municipal where you can find anything from great coffee to house wares, traditional masks and weavings and all sorts of medicinal plants or witch doctors remedies.
But culture is the main pride of the city and its Teatro Colon in the middle of town is the symbol of this cultural pride. Build at the end of the 19th century it was funded by taxes collected from all social strata of the society who were later allowed to join together the performances. All materials and artists were brought from Europe, while the many frescos with few exception were executed in Europe by painters who never visited or had any knowledge of the country’s traditions creating beautiful but sometimes displaced representations.
The theater’s floor is standing on a huge mechanism that can rise the floor by turning a crank manually 199 times. The job is done every four years by the newly elected president and his new government officials converting the theater (after removing the seats) in a great ballroom for the new government reception.
Also, like all Latin American towns the city is full of parks with statues of the heroic figures of the past all marked by the traces of the numerous pigeons flying around. In the middle of Parque Central is this atrocious construction – a band stand – that probably would have been the pride of Mussolini if he would have ruled Costa Rica.
But what San Jose lacks in outdoor charm you may find it in its resplendent museums. The Jade Museum located in front of the National Museum in a new five-floor building is at par with the best museums of Latin America. Five floors of a phenomenal collection of jade, and pre-columbian ceramic, with videos and representation of life before the coming of the Spaniards are a treat.
The other famous museum of the city holding the gold collection is placed three floors underground in the main square of the town near Teatro Colon. The many gold objects are displayed interspersed with beautiful pre-Columbian ceramic and explanations of the cosmology of the Costa Rica Bribri tribes. It has three floors, all underground, one dedicated to shamanism, a misnomer for this part of the world and one dedicated to a numismatic collection.
But if you have time for only one museum, pick the Jade Museum.
For more on Costa Rica click here
On the move
Puerto Viejo is the land of bikes. Everybody seems to rent one and ride the narrow roads relaxed, sometimes even in side-by-side pairs slowing down the cars that try to squeeze by. You can find bikes to rent everywhere rented for $5-8/day. You can bike all the way to Manzanillo or even to Cahuita if you are ready to fight the midday heat instead of sheltering in the AC of a shuttle.
My last day in Puerto Viejo started with rain. But rain is a constant presence even in the dry season to the point that is not even announced in the weather app. It may be a strong hour downpour and all that it shows on the weather app is “cloudy”. So you just shelter around a coffee, smoothie, or beer and wait for the downpour to pass. Pura Vida!
As the rain passed, the sun came up and I went for a last dip in the emerald waves of Playa Cocles, the best beach in Puerto Viejo, just a 10-minute of jungle walk from my hotel. Later I said goodbye to Vito another ex-pat who changed seven years ago San Diego for Puerto Viejo. His hotel Casa Vito, a remarkable place, was my home for my stay in Puerto Viejo where I spent many hours chatting with the amiable Vito. But now it was time to go and board the 6-hour bus to San Jose.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Leaving paradise
When you wake up in the morning and open the door of your room in Bocas you get this view that will stay with you forever. But if you are in Panama and have to decide between Bocas and San Blas I would still go with the latter. Bocas is mainly a party place with no cultural values while the San Blas archipelago is the home of the Kuna indigenous community with its trove of cultural richness and colorful molas. One has hotels and fancy restaurants while the other is offering wind-through cabins and tents with all food and travel inclusive. It’s your choice.
But for now, I had to pack and said goodbye to Marco at BarrBar. Marco made up his mind to move from the freezing Quebec where he used to live to Bocas some years ago and the smile never left his face since. With this smile, he wished me when we parted ways: “Enjoy your travels. Enjoy your life”. I boarded the morning boat to the mainland where a bus was waiting and I went again through all the border formalities to return to Costa Rica and Puerto Viejo.
I had one more thing to do there. I hopped in a tuk-tuk and went to visit Manzanillo park, a wildlife refuge only 10 km away from Puerto Viejo. The park has a trove of trails that end up at a number of beaches, caves or meander through the deep forest. While not as interesting as Cahuita the park is also a worthwhile place to visit while in Puerto Viejo.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Cahuita
Capuchin monkeys trying to steal food and howling monkeys jumping on the canopies in the far distance. This is Cahuita National Park considered to be one of the best parks in the entire Costa Rica, a park teeming with wildlife. At its entrance guides offer tours that will show through binoculars the animals up in the trees. But the pace was too slow for me and I decided to skip the group tour and let myself dive into the park followed by the howls of the monkeys that were resonating throughout the forest.
The park is divided between the local community where you pay a donation and the government side that charges an entry fee if you center on their side. There is mainly one hike along the perimeter of the park that follows the sea shore. The hike is about 11.5 km from the Cahuita village bus stop all the way back to the road in Puerto Vargas. The path crosses two rivers, Suarez and Precioso, good places for a swim in the emerald green waters of the Caribbean.
The path is flat and highly accessible but with so many animals around you keep stopping on the way. The hike is under a dense canopy all the way to Punta Cahuita. From there it turns following the shore and the walk is more or less in an oppressive sun till it reaches Sendero Los Cativos where it goes back under the forest canopy.
The locals recommend to get to the park as early as possible for higher chances to see animals. There is a bus that leaves Puerto Viejo at 7:20 AM reaching the park around 8:00 AM, at its opening time. The entire hike with all the stops on the way took about 4.5 hours. Waiting for a bus in Puerto Vargas, a collectivo showed up, picked everybody up, and brought us for an afternoon chill out on Playa Negra or Playa Cocles.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Puerto Viejo
The tiny village on Costa Rica’s coast of the Caribbean is the perfect hang-out place with beach after beach of various colors from the golden sand of Playa Coccles to the black sand of Playa Negra.
There are lots of places to visit around besides the beaches surrounding the village: two national parks, lots of kayaking places, indigenous villages, and waterfalls. The village teems with locals and foreigners who after an all-day hike find refuge from the daily heat at the local bars. Happy Hours boards get displayed in front of the restaurants – even “all-day Happy Hours”- attracting crowds around generous glasses of margaritas or pina colada.
Over the weekend the village morphs in a lively dance scene on Chino Beach where a DJ from a nearby restaurant pumps music that probably can be heard all the way to Panama.
In spite of looking like a backpacker’s paradise, Puerto Viejo gathers quite a diverse group of travelers ranging from 18 to 80 and beyond, all dressed all day long in shorts and flip-flops. The village caters to all these groups with accommodations that diverge substantially price-wise and with exquisite restaurants neighboring street food stalls.
And if the heat was too much you could always find a respite in cool shops that will point you to a different paradise than the one you inhabit. The fancy shops are also side-by-side with the street stands where the next day’s healthy breakfast awaits you.
For more on Costa Rica click here
Roaming the world 
You must be logged in to post a comment.