Costa Rica

Our Costa Rica adventure started off with a 12 hour flight from the UK to San Hose, the capital of Costa Rica. It was a two part trip, the first of which was a two week campervan trip ending in Puntarenus where we were boarding a boat to scuba dive the Cocos Islands. We had pre-arranged to hire a campervan from Costa Rider Campervans the day after we arrived so we headed out to find our hotel for the first night, The Alajuela Backpackers hostel, a cheap but clean hostel with private rooms near the airport in Alajuela City. The following morning the campervan arrived at the hotel as arranged, brought by the owners, a lovely couple who ran a small hire company and after a few formalities we were off up into the hills. Unfortunately out excitement didn’t last as a few miles outside the city the head gasket on the camper appeared to fail. After a call to the hire company they came straight out, returned us to San Hose and paid for another night in the hotel whilst they prepared a replacement vehicle for us. this did give us chance to explore the area around our hotel. So again the following morning we were finally off on our tour and headed our to Poas Volcano National Park.

Poas volcano is only around 20 miles from Alajuela City, but is an impressive sight. Poás volcano is said to be a powerful symbol of the geothermal forces that formed Costa Rica. When the mist and clouds part you’ll see the sulfuric, bubbling, green rain fed lake at the bottom, surrounded by smoke and steam rising from fumaroles. Water from the lake is constantly seeping through cracks in the hot rock, evaporating and building pockets of steam. You have to view from a platform at the rim of the crater but When the pressure in these pockets exceeds the weight of the water above, the steam breaks through in geysers that can rocket up to 820 feet high. Don’t worry about getting a shower though, the crater is 1,050 feet deep and almost a mile across, it’s also the largest active crater in the world. There is also a walkway that takes you to the neighbouring crater lake, Lake Botos that sits above the volcano hidden in the forest. Don’t expect to see any full fledged eruptions though as the most recent period of violent eruptive activity ended in 1954. From Poas we drove a few miles further and parked up for the night at Lo Que Tu Quieras Lodge, a small but level parking space next to one of their lodges.

In the morning we drove over to the Lapaz Waterfall Gardens and Nature Park, which was a short drive, only around 10 miles. La Paz Waterfall Gardens and Nature Park is the most visited, privately-owned, ecological attraction in Costa Rica featuring the Most Famous Waterfalls in Costa Rica. It also has the largest animal sanctuary in Costa Rica with over 100 species of animals and 3.5 kilometers of Cloud and Rainforest Hiking Trails. The layout is really good having enclosures for butterflies and birds separately so they have room to fly, but also has a humming bird viewing area, where wild humming birds come to feed, snakes, monkeys and frogs (including poisoned dart frogs) and other larger mammals. There is also a great trail that takes you through the forest to see the five waterfalls, finishing at a shuttle bus stop that takes you back to the main gardens. We were impressed by the standards of the place and how well looked after all the animals are as we wouldn’t normally visit a zoo. Its definitely worth a visit. Leaving here we drove around 60 miles to the Arenal Volcano car park, near Fortuna for the night. It's worth noting that you can park up practically anywhere in Costa Rica as long as you are not causing a nuisance or an obstruction.

Arenal Volcano is Costa Ricas most active volcano and unfortunately due to recent seismic activity the volcano trails were closed so we were only allowed to go a short way to where a rough rock landslide had blocked the path. The view of the volcano however was still impressive from a distance. Instead we decided to drive clockwise around Lake Arenal, Costa Rica largest lake at 33 square miles giving us the shortest route to MonteVerde. We had seen that this route had a river crossing but though out would be passable and half the distance than going fully around the lake, however when we got there it was too wide and deep (Tracey paddled out to check) to get anything other than a 4x4 across, so we were forced to go the long way around, an extra 50 miles. We left the main road at Tilaran and headed up to MonteVerde via the most direct route, 28 miles of the worst roads in the world followed, they had boulders and massive pot holes along most of the road, at one point our spare wheel was bounced out of its cage under the camper and we had to jack the camper up to get it out and re-secure it. There were point I wasn’t convinced we were going to make it, but eventually we arrived at MonteVerde and parked up for the night on a quiet car park.

The following morning we left the camper where we stayed and walked up to the entrance to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve was established in 1972 and initially covered some 810 acres of forested land. Nowadays, it has been extended to include over 35,089 acres and encompasses eight life zones at the top of the Continental Divide. There are over 100 species of mammals, 400 species of birds, and 1,200 species of amphibians and reptiles found within the park and It is one of the few remaining habitats on Earth that support all six species of the cat family — jaguars, ocelots, pumas, oncillas, margays, and jaguarundis, as well as the endangered three-wattled bellbird and resplendent quetzal. There are over 8 miles of accessible trails available for visitors to explore on their own or with a guide, but these only allow you to see a tiny part of the reserve. We decided to go out on our own and spent the morning wandering the trails, up through thick forest and into cloud. There is an amazing amount of life in the forest, pants seem to grow out of other plants or from the branches of trees, getting their water from the clouds and insects under every leaf. You also get to walk across a suspended walkway over a ravine that takes you through the canopy of the forest getting you up and close orchids growing in the trees. Monteverde is definitely worth a visit.

Following Monteverde we drove to the Barra Honda National Park where we parked up on their lodge carpark for the night where we were allowed to use their showers. In the morning we were woken by the loud strange noises of a troop of howler monkeys in the surrounding trees, and we watched one of the employees at the park shift a woodpile and uncover a huge snake that he said was venomous, he moved it to the bushes with a couple of sticks. Barra Honda National Park is renowned for its unique geological formations, including limestone caves and underground caverns, making it a unique in Costa Rica. You can walk some of the trails on your own but need to hire a guided tour to enter the caves, only two are open to the public. We hired a guided to take us on a hike through the forest and into the caves. The guide was extremely informative, talking through the flora and fauna of the area and the medicinal purposes of the plants, he shows us bats that were sleeping under large leaves and lizards hiding in the rocks, also large hawks circling the cliffs at a lookout point on top of the plateau, then taking us into Terciopelo cave after putting in our safety gear. To enter the Terciopelo cave you have to climb down a 17 m high ladder, to arrive in the entrance hall. From here you continue your descent through this first hall until you reach its bottom around 30 m below the surface. Another descent on a ladder brings you to the next cavern, the Sala de Huevos Fritos (the fried eggs cave) which among other curious formations features stalagtites that resemble fried eggs. To get to the third chamber you have to pass through a narrow opening. The bizarre limestone formations found here are compared to popcorn, roses, grapes and shark teeth. You exit via the way you came. We were the only people on the tour and it was interesting to experience aa less well known side of Costa Rica. The whole tour takes between 4 and 5 hours and following this we drove around 50 miles over to Ostional beach and parked up in a lay-by righ by the beach for the night.

Ostional beach is a famous nesting site for Oliver Ridley turtles probably the most important nesting site for these turtles in the world. Regularly there are large gatherings or “arribadas” where tens or even hundreds of thousands of turtles come to lay their eggs. These arribadas are usually at their peak in the rainy season on dark nights a few days before a new moon, but turtles can be found almost every nigh throughout the year. We had a walk along the beach that evening using red light torches to see what we could find, and although out of the main season we did find a couple of turtles laying their eggs, so we watched one of them at a distance until the turtle had returned to the sea, a more difficult process than it sounds as the poor turtle struggled to drag herself back to the sea, clearly exhausted from the hours before.

The following morning we returned to the beach and again found a few turtles, sadly we also discovered the reality for the turtles coming to lay their eggs in small numbers. One of the turtles had been attacked by a flock of vultures, picking on a weak spot at the back of her head, eventually piercing her skin and killing her before she could return to the sea. Ostional beach is also one of the only beaches in the world where you can legally harvest turtle eggs. Since there are so many turtles during arribadas, many of the eggs get destroyed by other turtles on following nights. The government set up a program where locals can legally harvest a certain number of eggs on the first few nights to sell so they can make a living and in return they protect and clean the beach and look after the baby turtles returning to the sea. From Ostional beach we drove 70 miles north to Playa De Coco where we parked up just outside of town for the night, right on the beach front.

We went to Playa Del Cocos as we had pre arranged a days scuba diving through Rich Coast Diving, a local diving outfit that runs dive excursions out to Bats Islands (Murcielago), a famous site for diving with Bull Sharks. Having called in the shop briefly to check our booking when we got to Playa Del Coco, we returned at 6:00am prompt for our days diving. The boat ride out to Bats is around two hours and when you get there you get two dives with around an hour between dives with a bite to eat supplied by Rich Coast. Both dives were fabulous with lots of Bull Sharks even though the visibility wasn't great. We got back to the dive centre around 2:00pm where we decided to drive over to Santa Rosa National Park, around 50 miles.

We stayed the night at the Santa Rosa National Park car park and camping ground, and the plan was to take a rough road down to the beach the next morning, but it soon became evident that the road was impassible to anything other than a 4x4, so we decided to leave the camper at the campground and walk the 8 or so miles through the forest down to the beach. Naranjo Beach is a stunning beach and being so difficult to get there was also completely empty. After a few hours on the beach unfortunately we had to walk the 8 miles back. Getting back to the camper we decided to stay the extra night then take a long morning drive the next morning down to Jaco, straight down National Route 1 also known as the "Pan American Highway", this was a long drive around 4 hours and 140 odd miles.