Costa Rica - the ultimate summary

 Costa Ricans, or Ticos as they like to call themselves, are a very nice, friendly race of people, inhabiting a country that might have been imagined by a nine year old child. That is a bit harsh, perhaps a ten year old. Unless you take a guided tour in which case such things will not be apparent to you, doing anything in Costa Rica is needlessly complicated.

The child will have imagined conical volcanos, jungles full of wild beasts, forests full of lollipop shaped trees and sandy beaches lapped by warm seas. All this is real, but the child has forgotten the means to link them all together.

The roads except in towns have no names. The buildings along these roads have no numbers. Navigation is therefore performed with reference to local landmarks e.g. ' The hotel is 20m west of the Igatsu crossroads' or ' The lodge is opposite the zoological park.' Now if you know the area well, or can speak Spanish to a local inhabitant, this is less of a problem, but if you are a non-Spanish speaking foreigner then such a system is useless.

Tourism in Costa Rica

The tourist industry is culpable of institutional hyperbole. Yes, there is a great diversity of birds, but unless you are a keen twitcher you won't see many of them because most are small creatures which dart about at high speed and have learnt to keep great distance between themselves and anyone with a camera or pair of binoculars. Ground and arboreal creatures are larger but sensibly prefer to remain hidden in dense foliage.

The tourist industry has responded by retraining eager locals as guides. They can be identified by the tripod bearing a spotterscope that they will be carrying, and the gaggle of slightly sunburnt tourists trailing in their wake, to whom they will be explaining the benefits of ecotourism.

Similarly, many ground dwelling creatures have evolved to avoid tourists by becoming nocturnal. The tourist industry has responded to this Darwinian tactic by creating night walks. Here the guides are instead armed with powerful spotlights and laser pointers to illuminate the slower moving of their prey, whilst they explain the benefits of ecotourism.

This leaves monkeys and raccoons as the most frequently sighted land animals, attracted as they are to human garbage and tourist's backpacks. These do not need to explain the benefits of ecotourism as they are already profiting from them.

Independent travel in Costa Rica.

There is an important industry carting tourists around in minibuses and coaches. This creates an incentive to deter independent travel by making it as difficult as possible. Hence roads are not made up or maintained, beaches only kilometers apart require detours ten times the length into the hinterland to drive between one and the other, and signposting is sporadic.

Take a travel kettle and cups and many tea bags with you. The electrical supply is 110V and uses American style sockets. This means patience if the kettle is 240V. A kettle because most hotel rooms don't provide one. Teabags because they are expensive here, despite a bewildering array of alternatives which make something almost completely dissimilar to tea( to borrow Douglas Adams' famous phrase). The tea bags should be kept in a hermetically sealed container ( Tupperware or similar) to avoid visitations by ants.

Expect anything in the road, especially after dark. This includes but is not limited to: people, speed bumps, horses, sleeping dogs, inexplicably parked cars, single lane bridges, children, river fords, cattle, branches of trees, bicycles and motor cycles without any lights at all, cars with no rear lights, potholes, canyon like storm drains and if you are really lucky, asphalt.

Hotels and lodgings rarely have signage from the main road, and if they do it will have been designed by a creative artist who has demonstrated his creativity by transforming the name into an elegant but barely legible work of art.

The only way to reliably navigate is to use a SatNav and program it with the GPS coordinates of your destination. That said, we came across one hotel which published the wrong coordinates because they showed a more favourable location, whilst another used the coordinates of the crater of a nearby volcano, so do check the coordinates match the expected location using satellite imagery. Unfortunately the method is not completely infallible because some hostelries claim they still do not know what GPS coordinates are.
(Our trusty SatNav and accompanying mobile phone are now up for sale here on EBay.
 (http://www.eBay.co.UK/itm/301553243242 )

On the plus side there are no beggars, the social security is strong and universal, as are the education and health systems. The police are helpful and patrol most roads used by tourists.

On the minus side you cannot leave anything anywhere without the possibility of theft. Travelling with baggage in the car is a nightmare, only park outside banks, police stations, or in supermarkets with security guarded compounds. Roads can be atrocious or summarily closed without explanation.

Anything to do with the government leaves you with the impression that they are primarily interested in your wallet rather than your presence.

Watch out for 2p British coins in your change. They are about the same size, colour and weight as 100 colon coins but have about a sixth of the value.

Paying in cash, either Colones or US Dollars, sometimes makes things cheaper for the purchaser as government tax may conveniently be forgotten about. Sometimes it just makes it more profitable for the vendor. You may come across places having signs saying that the card machine is temporarily out of order, the signs themselves often having an air of permanence.

Food is usually about the same or a little more expensive than the UK, but the quality is often poorer. Eating out is not only expensive but usually varies from uninspired to inedible. Petrol is about half the price. Car hire for 4x4s is ridiculously expensive if you want full insurance protection, and you do.

All in all for independent travellers, Costa Rica is an interesting place to spend some time, but extremely poor value for money and sometimes exasperating for the spirit.

Returning home

Possibly the ugliest building in San José.

After a morning shopping, we had lunch at the bright and airy food court on the fourth floor of the Universal on Avenida Central.

Grays Tours were prompt in picking us up by mjinibus at 2pm. It was supposed to be a shared service to the airport, but we had the minibus to ourselves.

We paid the $29 each exit tax at the airport without much queuing, but were unable to purchase any duty free rum, which was a shame. The assistants explained that if we did, as soon as we went through security at Madrid it would be confiscated as a suspicious liquid.

The Iberia flight left on time and we saw a mountain peak poking through the clouds, but alas not a volcano.

The flight was in a much more modern plane than the one in which we had arrived which let us view several recent films. Flying through the night the view over the Atlantic was magical, with small fluffy clouds being illuminated by moonlight with the starry black sky above.

Flying over East Dulwich, London

A smooth landing in Madrid and just enough time to get to the connecting BA flight to London. This was late both in departing and arrival so we were an hour behind schedule in alighting. However our bags were amongst the first off and we only had to wait 5 minutes for the RailAir coach to Reading. The coach only took 20 minutes and we then caught a cab back home.

We were pleased to find nothing major had gone wrong in our absence. A mouse had got in and chewed through a small water pipe, but as the water was switched off this had only resulted in a couple of small puddles on the floor.

Montezuma to San José

Breakfast with no less than three Crested Magpie Jays who were variously interested in scrambled eggs and sugar packets.

The road was good if slow but we got to the ferry at Paquera at quarter to ten. That meant we secured our place and bought our tickets before the bus came in and the queue became long.

The Tambor II left on time at 11am and the gulf was calm. We passed the sister ferry halfway across.

From Puntarenas we drove towards San José, hoping to find a restaurant for lunch, but in 120km there was nothing except toll booths and a few fruit sellers.

We dropped off the car with Dollar and they drove us back to El Presidente hotel in the middle of the city. A late lunch, a bit of shopping and then to P3, our favourite pub situated on the third floor of a block on an intersection of Avenida Central. Now back in our favourite San José hotel for the last night

Last day in Montezuma

Breakfast with only one Crested Magpie Jay who was today perhaps predictably uninterested in packets of anything, and just wanted scrambled egg.

Later in the morning we walked to a nearby waterfall, only a kilometer or so away, where local youths took it in turn to leap from high on the rocks into the plunge pool.

After lunching on most of the remaining contents of our fridge, a beautifully ripe mango and a pot of yoghurt, we strolled down the beach again looking for rock pools left by the falling tide.

We found several, but too small to swim in although home to many small fish. Then a tiger heron showed up and we spent a long time watching him.

HWe left the beach as 27 pelicans flew in formation away from the setting sun. Now we get ready for the journey home, as was this small agouti we met in the hotel gardens.

Montezuma - Playa Grande

Better today. Breakfast was shared with two Crested Magpie Jays. Beautiful birds, they each sat on a chairback either side of me. One of them chirruped to attract my attention whilst the other stole a packet of sugar from beside my cup of coffee! This routine was repeated a couple of times. An individual serving of strawberry jam disappeared in a similar manner. What the birds wanted the packets for is a mystery. Perhaps it is the current trend in nest decoration, who knows?

After breakfast we walked a couple of kilometers eastwards along a beautiful shady path that wound under palm trees, over headlands and dipped into sandy coves before opening out into the wide sandy beach that is Playa Grande.

This is a very entertaining hotel. It is set in a sort of jungle garden with gravel paths under palm trees, heliconias and gingers. Not only are we visited by geckos and eyed up by suspicious iguanas, but it is rare to walk down a path without surprising an agouti.

As I write a capuchin monkey has been jumping up and down for fun on the corrugated tin roof of the room making a noise like someone repeatedly kicking a metal dustbin. Usually it is the howler monkeys making all the noise.

Mal Pais to Montezuma

I don't understand. Last night I was disturbed time and time again by Montezuma's revenge. But we only travelled to Montezuma today. How and why did it exact its revenge in advance?

Luckily it was only a journey of 15km from Mal Pais, albeit along fairly poor apologies for roads, and took less than an hour. Even luckier was the fact that the hotel keeper at the 'Luz de Mono' had already prepared our room and let us in early.

I spent most of the day dozing on the bed, Christine did some shopping, reading by the swimming pool and went to a barbeque in the evening. It is a very nice family run hotel which exists as a point of interest on the SatNav so has obviously been going for some time. It is infinitely better than where we had just come from.

We managed a walk down to the beach just before sunset, but we are on the southern tip of the Nicoya peninsula now so we have lost the flamboyant sunsets of the western coast.

I'm feeling brighter now, after a day of not eating and alternately drinking cups of tea and coca-cola. I'm sure I'll be OK again tomorrow.

Mal Pais to St Teresa

Breakfast was interesting as the brass cutlery we were provided with looked and handled as though it had been manufactured in the Bronze age. A triumph of naive styling over practicality. Are these people unaware of Sheffield stainless steel?




We walked to St Teresa. All of 4 km along the beach. It took 6 hours to get there and one hour to walk back. Stopped at Playa Carmen to get some cash from the ATM.

However the discrepancy in journey times is mostly explained by the many swimmable rock pools created by the falling tide.

They were protected from the Pacific waves and American surfers by rocky outcrops surmounted by pelicans. A gritty sand underfoot largely comprised of comminuted sea shells ensured excellent visibility.

We used the snorkels to their best advantage this trip and saw many and varied fish.

We celebrated getting to St Teresa by purchasing a sort of granita on a stick, the eco-artisanal equivalent of an ice lolly. St Teresa has the same execrable road as the other settlements, mostly trafficked by ATVs with milk crates strapped to the front for groceries and surfboards strapped to the sides.

Then walked back along the beach to our latest favourite restaurant, Caracolas, for a couple of beers as the sun set ( it set rather slowly tonight) followed by another excellent fish supper featuring Mahi Mahi.

Carrillo Beach to Mal Pais

Got talked into taking the coastal route south to Mal Pais rather than the safer if longer inland route. Unlike the inland route, the coastal route is entirely on unpaved roads, at one point runs along a beach and has several river crossings to ford, including the river Bongo pictured beneath.

For once our SatNav was useless as it wanted not only to go on the inland route, but then to avoid a bad stretch of road by taking one ferry back to Puntarenas and then recrossing the gulf on the other ferry. A trip some 200kms longer than the coastal route!

All, however, went well. At each river crossing I made Christine get out and wade the route first to make sure the water wasn't too deep. She made feeble complaints about sharp rocks underfoot and the possibility of crocodiles lurking in the undergrowth on the riverbanks but I pointed out that it was mostly her idea to come this way and anyway she couldn't drive the car.

As we progressed the SatNav changed its mind and became helpful again, even suggesting alternatives to the 4x4 only route we were taking. It wasn't a particularly difficult route, the area is just kept unnecessarily inaccessible by the lack of tarmac and bridges.

We reached Mal Pais without incident. It isn't really a town, it isn't really a village, just a stretch of dusty unmaintained road with a scattering of hotels and restaurants alongside the potholes.

Unfortunately the hotel we thought we had chosen, 'La Hacienda Lodge', turned out to be a B&B with few facilities and a rather ambitious ( and we assume self awarded) four star rating. The room is comfortable enough, even luxurious by local standards, but rather overpriced for all that.

We walked along the beach northwards but didn't reach St Teresa, the local centre, before we needed to turn back because of the time. However we found a beautiful restaurant, Caracolas, on the sea shore at sunset. It was almost over the road from the lodge and we enjoyed a delicious meal of mahi mahi before retiring for the night.

Last day at Carrillo Beach

We made the last day at Carrillo a two beach day.
After breakfast, started by driving to Samara but the water, though still beautifully warm and calm was still too turbid for snorkeling.

Drove back to the northern end of Carrillo where the reef protects the beach at low tide. The water was adequately clear to see the bottom, but there were no fish. Probably the pelican count should have told us, 10 at Samara, 1 at Carrillo!


Back to the lodge for a cup of tea and a swim for Christine.

It will be a wrench to leave this lodge, it has been such a relaxing stay.

Samara Beach - another lazy day

Not much activity today either. Drove into Samara, all of 3km away.

The tide was out and a reef protected most of the bay. The sea was too turbid for snorkeling, but the water was lovely and warm and calm enough for swimming, or fishing if you happened to be a pelican.

The beach is a crescent of light coloured sand and almost deserted despite being next to the village.

Back to the cabin for a cup of tea.

Later walked down to Carrillo beach to down a sunset beer under the palm trees. There are gaudily painted cast concrete chairs and tables to facilitate this ritual.

Lazy Sunday

No real activity today. In the morning we booked a hotel in Mal Pais for a couple of days when we leave here, and enquired about another in Montezuma for the final part of the trip. Both are towards the southern tip of the Nicoyan peninsular.

The man came and fixed one sliding door by dint of altering the top of the frame so that the rectangular door better fitted the trapezoidal opening.

This is by far the most relaxing place that we have stayed. The ambience is pleasant and laid back, with equally pleasant and laid back background music and lighting amongst the palm trees and swimming pool.

Christine pointed out that when things don't work here, which is often the case, it is merely a functional aberration and that their artistic integrity remains intact.

In the afternoon we returned to the beach, but pretty as it was, the sea was still far to rough for swimming. We celebrated another spectacular sunset with a beer, then toddled back to the lodge.

Carrillo beach

The morning was spent reading on the cabin's balcony, as we start the lazy part of the trip. Like much of the cabin, it is a confection of purple and lime green under a corrugated iron roof.

The cabin owes its character to the fact it was not only conceived and designed, but also constructed and decorated, in a style best described as Soweto chic. Much was achieved despite the absence of both plumbline and level, so right angles whilst not absolutely absent, remain something of a rarity.

This wouldn't be of concern except for the decision to fit sliding glass doors to access the bathroom and balcony. The doors have long given up their uneven uphill struggle, and now, when they deign to open at all, will only open sufficiently to permit access in a sideways manner.

This morning the owner, a genial and tactile man but seemingly not blessed with mechanical sympathy, attempted to make reparations armed with a can of WD40. After 10 minutes hard toil and having managed to jam one door half open, he ruefully admitted his attempts had only made matters worse and it would be better to wait for his assistant who would return tomorrow. We will see.

After lunch we repaired to the beach. This is a pretty crescent of light coloured sand, backed by palm trees and with warm water.

The trouble was that yesterday's wind had caused great Pacific rollers to evade the protecting coral reef and come crashing onto the shore.

We tried going into the sea but the force of the waves was too great so we settled for a very pleasant stroll up and down the beach. I am sure tomorrow will be calmer as the wind has abated.

We admired sunset on the beach, then walked the gentle few hundred metres back to the lodge.

Manuel Antonio to Playa Carrillo

I have a theory that the ridiculously low speed limits in the country prompt the Ticos to occasionally crash into each other purely to relieve the boredom of driving.

We journeyed northwards along the coast road and stopped where a lot of people had congregated on a river bridge. This is what they were staring down at.

We bought provisions at Jaco, a strange town where apparently empty blocks of condominiums for Americans outnumbered inhabitants.

Then on to Puntarenas where we filled up with petrol and boarded a ferry to Naranjo on the Nicoyan peninsula. It was a pleasant if windy hour and a half long cruise. The cloud which persistently cloaked the inland mountains could plainly be seen.

Unfortunately the ferry was half an hour late in departing, and had trouble docking at the other end too. For some reason these ferries dock by coming in sideways and the collateral damage to the berthing structures was obvious.

The lateness meant that night had fallen before we reached our destination, the Tropicale Beach Lodge at Carrillo Beach. Typically there was no sign from the main road, but our trusty satnav led us to an animal sanctuary which we knew was opposite to the lodge, and by 7pm we were ensconced in a rather sweet cabin in its grounds.

A day on Espadilla beach

Beach day at Espadilla beach.

Apart from wandering to the beach bar for a light lunch, the day was spent either reading under the shady trees which line the beach, or playing with the waves in the warm water.

The temperature was a little lower than yesterday, and the humidity was a lot lower. A very comfortable day.

Manuel Antonio National Park

Walked approximately 2km to Manuel Antonio national park. Temperature I guess about 30 degrees C and near 100% humidity. Quite sticky. Queued for a ticket ( usual rip-off, 16 dollars for foreigners, 1 dollar 60 cents for locals) then queued to get in. It is the smallest of the national parks and perversely the most popular.

Trails are short but in these conditions quite taxing. They are well constructed and maintained, albeit sometimes with a brutalism which ill reflects the setting. The redeeming feature is the provision of potable water taps without which despite carrying 2 litres of water we would have had to curtail our visit.

Animals were mostly restricted to monkeys although armies of guides with Carl Zeiss spotterscopes were enthusing to their clients about barely visible organisms in the treetops.

We followed one trail to a dried up waterfall, more of a water trickle, then hit the beach.

The beach is why most people visit the park. It is a sheltered cove on the leeward side of the tombolo where the water is warm and relatively tranquil. We found a spot guarded by an old iguana, although still had to fend off the predations of bandit raccoons.

After lunch we walked the trail around the head of the tombolo. All deciduous hardwoods with a few palms, notably a ferocious black palm which I think was the inspiration for pigeon spikes.

When we got back to the beach everyone had disappeared. It was like the Marie Celeste. We walked back to the entrance expecting to be thrown into jail for being in the park after closing time, but the gates were open and we just walked out. Very strange.

The sun set as we walked along the beach to get back to the hotel. It was beautiful.

A day on the beach

Another fine day. Went to beach without camera for fear of monkey pilferings so no photos today.

 Stopped as we walked down the road to watch a three toed sloth climbing back up a tree with exaggerated care. For the scatologically obsessed section of my readership, sloths do everything up a tree except defecate. For this they descend approximately weekly, losing up to a third of their bodyweight during the process.

When we reached it, the sea was warm, the beach was superb and backed with shady trees only occasionally containing monkeys, none of which came anywhere near us.

We walked to the end where Christine began paddling in a small freshwater lagoon behind the beach until I drew her attention to the sign saying 'Beware of crocodiles'.

Returned to the hotel hot and sticky but neither sunburnt nor molested by the local wildlife.

San Gerardo de Dota to Manuel Antonio

We awoke to another fine and sunny day.

Before we left San Gerardo de Dota, we said goodbye to Mr and Mrs Quetzal. She sat on her favourite branch but he was shy and hid behind leaves.

We also paid a visit to a hummingbird's nest. You can just see a fledgling's beak poking out from beneath the mother. She is about 2 inches long and the smallest species in the country.

First and second gear ground us up a thousand metres in altitude to the highway. Aptly named, we reached 3510 metres above sea level and were enveloped in cloud and rain again.

Eventually we descended and turned westwards to the Pacific. We stopped for lunch on the beach and met a very defensive crab, and serried flights of pelicans silently glided above us while Pacific rollers crashed into surf in front of us.

The coast road ran through miles of oil palm plantations. The Hotel Flor Blanca came as a bit of a shock though. Very basic with little to commend it.

We walked down a very steep mostly dirt road to the beach. The beach itself was stunning. White sand against outcrops of basaltic agglomerate forming islands, sea stacks and tombolas.

The sloth special

At last an internet connection good enough to upload video! It only took 20 minutes.

This is the three toed sloth we saw low down in the trees at Toucan and Tarpon Lodge in Tortuguero.

A walk in the woods.

What is the collective name for birdwatchers? A twitch?

Mr and Mrs Quetzal were not at home today, so we decided to go for a walk in the woods. I had found on the internet that a 6.2km trail called Los Robles ( the oaks) started from the next door lodge, Hotel Savegre.

We were a bit tired from yesterday's walking, so decided to take a shorter trail. However, somehow we missed the start of the shorter trail and ended up on Los Robles in any case.

We decided we would continue, and eventually climbed from 7000 feet above sea level to about 8000 feet. We were walking through oak forest with an understory of bamboo, palms and occasional tree ferns. We also came across the centenary oak. A title bestowed by the well known Institute of Biodiversity and an obvious source of pride.

Christine is a well known weightlifter and achieved a personal best lift on this trail.

Eventually we returned to our chalet after an 11km walk, mostly in dappled sunlight. We decided to sneak up on the quetzals on water, but they were still not at home.