After relaxing thoroughly for a day in Dominical on the Pacific coast, we took the bus to Costa Rica’s tourist stronghold an hour to the north, Manuel Antonio National Park. Here you are supposed to see many of the animals Costa Rica is known for. Above all: sloths!
We took the bus towards the national park early in the morning (around half past seven), bought our 16-dollar entry ticket and a heavenly, delicious coco frío each, and off we went on our wildlife spotting tour. We did not join a guided tour, but did enjoy the convenience of using the guided groups as an indication of where the animals to be spotted might be hiding.
After the first groups had been watching crabs, colourful insects and hummingbirds, for which you are rather lost without binoculars, things got considerably more interesting on the Sendero de Perezoso, the sloth path. We did indeed spot a few sloths, although the close-up experience was more of the variety: do you see up there, where the two branches fork, the dark patch in the fork? That is a sloth.
But we had also read that things are considerably quieter away from the main path and that you have a better chance of close-up animal encounters. So we diligently walked every path in the national park.
And what did we see along the way? A few monkeys and crabs. And lovely views of the sea. That was it.
More animals were to be seen where all the visitors were gathered, on the other hand. Obviously, since that is where there was food to steal. Capuchin monkeys and raccoons in particular knew no fear of us humans.
I had imagined Costa Rica’s most visited national park to be considerably larger, but after only four hours we had genuinely walked every path. Another coco frío later we were already on the bus back to our accommodation, which had turned out to be an incredibly cosy BnB. And we had no objection to enjoying it at length in the afternoon.
In the evening we went to an eco-green-vegan-whatever restaurant to do ourselves some culinary good. Costa Rica is considerably more expensive than Mexico and Guatemala, but the sight of these prices made us swallow hard. But hey, what would you not do to ensure the vegetables you eat had a happy life… It tasted quite good, but a long way from overwhelmingly good. And when the bill came, the next shock: not only 10 per cent service charge added, but a further 13 per cent on top because the restaurant is attached to the neighbouring hotel and has to pay a levy for it. 23 per cent on top? What!?! I sometimes genuinely wonder why people on TripAdvisor still give full marks under these circumstances…
The next day we set off for Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. Having found our first bus journey to the Cloudbridge Reserve rather complicated, we had by now quickly made friends with the Costa Rican bus network. The challenge lies in there being dozens of bus companies for the various routes, each with its own bus station within the city. Once you know exactly where you have to go, though, it is easy.
So from Quepos/Manuel Antonio we travelled three hours to the capital San José, took a taxi to the next bus station and from there the bus for 4.5 hours to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast. On the way we passed Puerto Limón: THE banana export port. Hundreds of containers stood ready to be filled with Dole and Chiquitá bananas and start their journey to Hamburg, among other places.
In Puerto Viejo we were greeted by an entirely different flair from anything we had known in Costa Rica so far: everything was so - well - Caribbean! The way I imagine the Dominican Republic without ever having been there…
The next day greeted us in a most un-Caribbean - or particularly Caribbean? - way with unbroken rain. We hired bikes all the same and rode to the Jaguar Rescue Center 4 km away. Incidentally, when choosing our volunteering we had wavered between Cloudbridge and the Jaguar Rescue Center. In the end we decided against the rescue centre, since the minimum stay is 4 weeks and you have to pay 300 dollars to volunteer (in addition to accommodation and food). But once you are there it is a good opportunity to see the local wildlife up close - especially since it is far more active in the rain than in sunshine.
The sloths were genuinely huggable and climbed about in front of us ultra-actively, so that we “sadly” could not maintain the two-metre safety distance at all times. That alone made getting thoroughly rained on during the bike ride worth it!
The next day the sun blazed the way you hope it will when travelling in Central America. Because honestly, we have had to endure quite a lot of rain these past weeks. In Guatemala as well as in Costa Rica’s cloud forest there was sunshine in the mornings, but mostly rain or at least overcast skies in the afternoons. Our tan from Mexico has suffered badly!
We took the bus to Cahuita National Park half an hour away, which runs right along the beach. You can cross it on a 10 km path and take the bus back to Puerto Viejo from the other end of the park. So we had the sea on our left all day.
We saw a great many capuchin and howler monkeys and even a snake, which, mind you, was highly venomous! But since I only have a smartphone for photography, I still had to get within 15 cm…
Personally I find the busy leafcutter ants fascinating. And grasshoppers bigger than your thumb. But only in the national park, at a safe distance from our accommodation.
We had a few more destinations on our list within Costa Rica. When we looked at the connections to Colombia, our next destination, though, we had to note that prices had shot up insanely. Almost 500 euros per person for barely 2 hours of flying seemed slightly excessive to us. So we spontaneously threw our remaining Costa Rica plans overboard and booked the last affordable flight to Colombia - where, tadaaaa, we landed yesterday.
And at last my pack is back under 7 kg on the scales, since I was able to shed some accumulated ballast:
- My second 2 for the price of 1 pair of flip-flops, bought in Cancún over three months ago (!), stayed in the Cloudbridge collection box.
- A pair of wellies I had bought for the volunteering (and which rubbed my ankles horribly raw) also stayed at Cloudbridge as a donation.
- The beautiful handmade cups we were given by our Spanish school in Guatemala found a happy new owner in bird lover Laura, thanks to the hand-painted hummingbirds. Porcelain is sadly extremely impractical for backpacking…
- And the snorkelling gear bought in Playa del Carmen , after travelling unused in my pack for over three months, I finally left behind in Costa Rica as well.