Awesome thanks for that BS! Really looking forward to checking CR out, hopefully my vacation time gets approved. I was thinking pacific cost although was going to try and avoid San Jose as I had heard its pretty crappy, but that Manuel Antonio view looks work spending a night there if need be.
Thanks everyone for the advice! My spanish consists of virtually nothing so I will pick up a phrase book, gf speaks a bit as she took it all through middle/high school.
San Jose is inland. Manuel Antonio is completely separate as it’s a town along the cost near Jaco. I think you may have gotten confused regarding what I wrote.
Yeah, there’s always that one guy that has to chime in with “X region is touristy, it’s not even real Y continent.” No matter where you go there’s always someone that’s going to try to knock it down with, “If you didn’t have to get in a back alley knife fight for your food in Caracas it’s not even real South America.”
No sorry I may not have been clear on my response. When I was originally planning the trip I was planning on trying to avoid flying into San Jose as depending on timing of arrival/departure it may require a stay over. I was planning on trying to fly into Liberia airport as I have heard better things.
Looking up travel & such to the Jaco/Manuel Antonia area from SJO now and it seems they have shuttles for not too bad so that may be what I opt for. Not sure I would feel comfortable driving there honestly.
Yeah, it might make more sense just to fly into the Liberia airport and avoid San Jose all together. Place is a dump, the mirador resturants are more just for burning a night if you end up having to fly into San Jose for some reason.
pura vida, mai. you’ve seen my knife fight in Caracas too? I really need to get youtube to take that down.
My point was that people could fly in, hit a marriott somewhere and they might as well be anywhere. Central America is a funny old place, you’ve got Costa Rica, the richest nation in central and south america bordered with Nicaragua, the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere nestled in alongside Honduras with the highest HIV rates outside Africa, El Salvador with more guns than people and Guatemala and Mexico leading the way in murder stats.
That’s quite a generalization for the country, where did you go that you saw that? I mean, parts of it are touristy, but it’s not the way you’re describing.
Anyhow, you could make that argument for literally anywhere. Every country has areas that are either isolated or commercialized beyond the rest of the country and areas that are more “real.” If you use the existance of a MacDonalds or chain hotel to rule out entire countries you’ll miss a lot of beautiful places.
The cloud forests of Costa Rica are one of a kind, the surf is great and I have a lot of whitewater kayaking friends that have traveled down there to camp and kayak in remote areas. Limon is pretty legit if you want the true Central American experience and will feel a lot like Niceragua.
In the same vein, Bali has touristy parts, but I’d recommend it to anyone in the area.
Are you taking Zika into account? This may be enough to scare me off.
I was looking into Zika, from what I have read there have only been a handful of isolated cases in certain areas. Costa Rica seems to have not been hit yet, but I was worried about that. Alas it doesnt matter as of now because my vacation was not approved due to timing issues (which was not entirely unexpected) and my gfs schedule is much more restrictive.
Wont be able to travel until the rainy season there so it looks like this may have to wait a year or two unfortunately.
I was there once in January at the tail end of rainy season. It was extremely humid with torrential showers for about an hour each day, but overall it was a blast. I was there with about 15 friends from college so we just spent the downtime drinking and hanging out or surfing in the rain. It was still warm. Plus they have a huge month long festival at Palmares inland where they basically party around the clock to celebrate the end of the rainy season, so that was fun too.
Update: Trip is back on! Due to some staffing changes we had to move around some work and it freed up some others in my office to cover my work.
Going to fly into Liberia. Prices for flights to SJO were significantly more expensive flying something crappy like Delta and I was having trouble finding non-stops. For cheaper I can fly jetBlue into Liberia nonstop so I am going with that. Deciding if I want to suck it up and take a longer shuttle to Jaco/Manuel Antonio or if I am just going to stay in the Guanacaste region somewhere like Playa Hermosa/Playa Flamingo. Either way I plan on hitting up Monte Verde for a day trip.
I didn’t spend much time in Guancaste but loved the time in Manuel Antonio. Most of my friends that have gone down have opted for Manuel Antonio as well. It’s very beautiful.
What time of year do you plan to go? I went for my honeymoon last year - my wife wanted a beach vacation and I wanted some adventure/nature.
There is a “green season” (wet season) all year long - which means that part of the year it’ll be wet on one coast and dry on the other. I went in October and we stuck to the Caribbean coast. It rained every day in the jungle (which was expected) and not once at the beach.
We spent a day whitewater rafting in Turrialba and then three nights in a jungle lodge in Tortuguero National Park. This was the highlight of the trip and one of my all-time favorite experiences. Our lodge was only accessible by boat or plane and was situated on a jungle canal. We took several tours during our time there and saw a plethora of wildlife including (but not limited to) crocodiles, jaguars, hammerhead sharks, manatees, snakes, sloths, toucans, and frogs of all sorts in their natural habitats. We were also there for the tail end of turtle hatching season and were able to witness sea turtles leaving their nests for the first time to get to the ocean (Tortuguero is one of the largest protected turtle nesting sites in the world).
From there, we traveled down the coast past Limon (as Black Swan noted earlier, this is a shitty port that isn’t worth your time). We passed through Limon only because we had to in order to get to Puerto Viejo. PV is a laid back hippy town that’s growing in popularity. While there, we spent a lot of time at the beach and visiting coffee and chocolate plantations. We also traveled to beaches at Cahuita, Playa Negra, and Manzanillo. Bocas Del Toro (Panama) is a popular day trip that many other travelers that we met enjoyed. You indicated an interest in resorts in an earlier post - there aren’t any of those here.
Let me know if any of the above interests you and I can steer you in the direction of accommodations - I can’t recommend our jungle lodge enough and one of our boutique hotels in Puerto Viejo was a lot of fun.
I stayed at Puerto Viejo too. Definitely more of a hippy rastafarian feel when I was there. Reading your account brought back good flashabacks of my trip. Man, if I could go back to that trip, bunch of college kids having a godo time.
Wow Tortuguero sounds amazing. Really bummed I will only have 7ish days due to time constraints, having to narrow down to a couple things is pretty difficult, currently planning on hitting up the Pacific coast. Wish I had at least 2 weeks to make it around more of the country… Seems like I will have to make note of these things and come back sometime in the future. Its crazy how a country that is so small has so much diversity and so much to see. If you asked me if I wanted to spend 2 weeks in West Virginia the answer would most definitely be no (no offense to west virginians)
Anywho the trip will be mid-march so going to sit down and pull the trigger in the next few days
I think we covered all that ground in about 7 days (it may have been 8 but we arrived late at night).
Regardless, I think the Pacific coast is a better idea this time of year (without looking, I believe its green season on the Caribbean side around now).
Correction - we actually spent 10 days there, sorry.
Two cases of Zika in CR. I know that’s miniscule, but if it were me I’d either choose a different place or go another year.
Didnt see that until just now… Yikes! Booked the trip last night, gonna be in Playa Hermosa & Mounte Verde. Guess I will be hitting the bug spray hard.
Bump
How was the trip? Going there with the family in a few weeks. Flying into Liberia and staying 10 days. We’re already setup for the first half with a rental house near Lake Arenal and will do the volcanos and rainforest stuff, but debating the the 2nd half of the trip. How was Playa Hermosa and did you visit Tamarindo/Playa Grande or Samara by chance?
Trip was awesome! Was like a year ago to date, loved Playa Hermosa very quiet little beach town spent my days that I didnt go do something on the beach drinking and in the ocean.
I did visit Tamarindo with some other Americans that were staying at the hotel I was at. It depends what you are looking for really, Tamarindo was pretty Americanized and would certainly be more comfortable if you wanted something like that. Plenty of restaurants and lots to do, seemed like a bit of a younger crowd (as in early 20’s) but it had more to do than most of the towns we drove through to get there. If you are looking to experience a bit more of the culture youd probably be best to avoid Tamarindo for those same reasons, I thought it was cool to visit but the beaches were way more crowded than any of the smaller communities you could find.
Didnt check out any of those other places but trip advisor gives a pretty good idea of the areas and you can kind of pick where you want to go based on how populated you want it to be which is nice. They are all going to be hot as hell if you are going within the next few weeks most likely, we werent on the beach from noon-3pom daily due to the fact that it was just too strong us sun with no clouds and about 105 in all of Guanacaste this time of year. Was a nice time to head off grab some lunch and drinks as most towns I saw have lots of resteraunts on beachfront properties you can walk to. All the trees that arent directly on the beach shed their leaves due to the heat/lack of water its pretty wild to see.
Not sure where around Arenal you are going to be, but take a peak and see if you are by the Tenorio area. If you happen to be I suggest checking out the Rio Celeste and seeing if thats something your family may be into. Was a hike (and not the easiest one in the world) but was able to see some absolutely beautiful scenery & a stunning blue waterfall.
All in all, CR is amazing I will definitely be doing back within the next 5 years but most likely checking out the south western & Caribbean side next time. Hope you & the family have an awesome trip!