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pandemicperipatetics · 5 months

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1 Week in Costa Rica

View along the drive from Monteverde to Manuel Antonio

Overview

We spent about a week exploring the rain forests, hot springs, and beaches of Costa Rica. I am conflicted about whether I would recommend visiting here and/or return myself.

On the one hand, it was really beautiful (the rain forests were a particularly unique experience for me), we had a relaxing time at the resorts we stayed at, and the direct flight from NYC was convenient and quick (~4.5 hours each way). On the other hand, public infrastructure was poor (e.g., poorly maintained roads with insufficient road signs and highly disorganized traffic; smells of sewage in the national park and even in our fanciest resort at times), the social contract felt less intact than even in the U.S. (we felt like we were being scammed half the time, even in dealings with globally known brands like Hertz and Uber Eats; drivers on the roads seemed both aggressive and incompetent), and everything was comparably expensive to developed countries we’ve visited – think NYC prices for developing world infrastructure.

Personally, next time I’d probably choose a developed country with better infrastructure and similarly beautiful scenery, like Hawaii, somewhere in Europe (Switzerland and Norway are favorites), or if specifically looking for rainforest, perhaps Australia, which has one of the largest rainforests in the world (I haven’t visited that rainforest myself, but found Australia delightful to visit when I was recently in Tasmania).

Sunset from the short hike at our hotel's reserve at Manuel Antonio

Here's our Costa Rica itinerary and some high-level commentary on it:

Direct flight from Newark to Liberia (small airport in the northwest part of Costa Rica)

Picked up a one-way car rental at Hertz – our pickup was relatively easy, but we later saw that Hertz in both Liberia and San Jose (where we dropped off the car) have awful reviews for being scammy.

Drive to Arenal (3 nights) – this was a very lazy few days, the main attractions were the Tabacon hot springs and views of Arenal Volcano.

Drive to Monteverde (2 nights) – highlights here were the resort (Senda Monteverde) and the zipline experience over the rainforest.

Drive to Manuel Antonio (2 nights) – the national park here was stunning and rife with wildlife spottings, but the surrounding area was a bit unpleasant (crowded, trafficky, lots of scammers). Seems like a must-visit place if you go to Costa Rica though.

Drive to San Jose (1 night) - We did not hear good things about San Jose and did not explore, we only went there because we were flying out of San Jose Airport back to NYC.

Direct flight from San Jose to Newark

Arenal

View of the Arenal Volcano from the Arenal National Park hike on a very rainy day

Arenal is an area known for the Arenal Volcano and the Tabacon Resort ($$$$) and its thermal hot springs. It was a ~2 hour drive from Liberia airport – the drive was okay, but not super special.

View of the lake on our drive from Liberia to Arenal

The Tabacon Resort was nice, but underwhelming relative to anywhere else we stayed. I’m not big on hot springs, but I was pretty impressed with the resort’s hot springs, which were a bit of a maze of pools within a beautiful garden. Visitors can also pay ~$60pp to access the hot springs without staying at the resort. Personally I wouldn’t go out of my way for this, but if you love hot springs it could be worth a visit.

Tabacon hot springs

The activities in the area were nice, but also underwhelming compared to other parts of Costa Rica that we visited. We walked the trail in Arenal National Park (~$17pp). Yes, it was a single trail – we learned that national parks in Costa Rica are compact and expensive relative to national parks in the U.S. It poured almost the entire time we walked, making it a relatively unpleasant experience, and the scenery was very nice but also basically the same as what we saw in the other national parks we visited. The view of Arenal Volcano was fine – not Mount Rainier level amazing though.

The rainforest at Arenal National Park

Trying to hike in pouring rain and muddy trails

The vegetarian food at the hotel was limited and not amazing. We enjoyed the options at Organico Fortuna in the nearby town of La Fortuna (~20 min drive from our resort).

Though our experience was good, I probably wouldn’t return to Arenal vs. other parts of Costa Rica / the world.

Monteverde

Monteverde Cloud Reserve hike

We had a great time in Monteverde. It was a ~3 hour drive from Arenal on some very potholed roads (honestly a neck pillow for the drive wouldn’t be a bad thing), but the scenery on the drive was very beautiful.

On the trail at the Aguti Reserve near our hotel in Monteverde

The area is known for the Monteverde Cloud Reserve ($25pp entry for a ~2 hour walk in the rainforest). We enjoyed the walk – it wasn’t super different from walking in Arenal National Park, but it was nice that it didn’t rain.

We also had a very nice zipline experience (~$65pp for a ~3 hour experience traversing 13 ziplines). The ziplines took us over the rain forest, which was a very cool vantage point, and the zipline guides were extremely professional and very friendly. I would definitely recommend this.

The zipline experience also included an optional "Tarzan Swing"...

We stayed at the lovely Senda Monteverde ($$$), a luxury resort with rooms with an elevated treehouse vibe. The resort offered free admission to the nearby Aguti Reserve, with lots of trails to walk through rainforest flora. They also had many nice touches such as a free minibar in the room, free activities such as yoga, medicinal tea, and cocktail making, and leaving us heated water bottles before bedtime when it got a little chilly. We had a great experience here.

Treehouse vibes at Senda Monteverde

The resort grounds were so lush and beautifully designed

Monteverde was the chilliest place we stayed – I was glad I brought a few full sleeve shirts and a fleece jacket – and it rained on and off during our visit. It was also the least crowded area we visited, which was a treat.

Manuel Antonio National Park

On the water at Manuel Antonio

Manuel Antonio National Park was stunning (entrance is ~$17pp for 3+ hours of hikes in the rainforest and access to beautiful sandy beaches). It encompasses both rainforest and some of the bay leading into the Pacific Ocean. We saw the most wildlife at Manuel Antonio vs. any other area. We didn’t have time to enjoy the beaches, but they looked lovely.

We so so many monkeys on the Manuel Antonio National Park hike!

However, the park is a bit overrun, understandably given its exquisiteness. It was mandatory to buy entrance tickets online in advance (we tried to do this the morning of and all that was left was an 11am entry time, but our hotel concierge told us we could still enter earlier, which worked out fine for us). The park entrance was overrun with aggressive, scammy men posing as official park tour guides (they were not) and trying to fraudulently sell parking spots. We were lucky that our hotel offered a free shuttle to and from the park so we didn’t have to deal with the hassle of parking here (we also saw there was a public bus, which seemed like a good option).

Manuel Antonio hike - one of the trails led to this beautiful rocky beach

Another trail at Manuel Antonio National Park led to this beautiful viewpoint -- some parts of the park reminded us of the Road to Hana in Maui

We also really enjoyed doing a half-day catamaran excursion (~$80pp, booked through Viator and also available to book through the hotel) with views of the national park from the water. The water was too murky to see anything when we tried snorkeling, but the views throughout were gorgeous.

On the catamaran

We stayed at Gaia Hotel ($$), a resort with rooms that weren’t as luxurious as our other stays, but with the best, most personalized and attentive service we experienced anywhere on our trip. The resort also had a reserve on the property and free guided walking tours of it – we got to see macaws and a beautiful sunset over the water.

Sunset at Gaia (the resort is the white building on the left on the water)

Manuel Antonio was the hottest place we stayed – definitely weather for shorts/t-shirt or light hiking pants/light UPF protective shirt + mosquito repellent. The vegetarian food at the hotel looked unappealing, but there were a few decent restaurants in town (we liked Namaste Indian, Varuna Plant-Based for salads and smoothie bowls, and the Thai restaurant), all in 2-3 block area. Driving in this area was somewhat unpleasant: the one road leading to and from the park was trafficky and full of aggressive and bad drivers, and it was hard to find parking near the restaurants in town.

Iguana hanging out by the pool at Gaia resort

San Jose

The ~4 hour drive from Manuel Antonio to San Jose was miserable. The paucity of road signs (i.e., giving drivers advance notice when a 2nd lane on the road was closing) and many disrespectful drivers created a lot of needless traffic and danger on the road.

Once we reached San Jose, we stayed at the Marriott Hacienda Belen on points, a 20-min drive from the airport. It turned out to be a very nice hotel (great fitness center, Christmas carols) though the vegetarian food options were minimal and we used Uber Eats instead (and got stomach sick off the vegan food we tried).

Nothing we saw of San Jose on our drive in, and then later to the airport, made me think it would be a nice place to spend more time.

Returning our car rental to the San Jose airport was a bit complicated since they didn’t give us an address, and we initially went to the wrong location (at the domestic terminal vs. an offsite location). If you use Hertz here – which I’m not sure can be recommended given how poor their Google reviews are – the San Jose airport dropoff location is called “Hertz Costa Rica Rio Segundo, Alajuela” and is opposite a Hampton Inn.

The San Jose international airport terminal was very crowded (on a Saturday mid-day) – security took about half an hour, and neither of the two Priority Pass lounges had any capacity to accept new guests. All of the food places in the terminal had horrible Google reviews (<3 stars).

Just another gratuitous picture of the sandy beaches at Manuel Antonio National Park, since we took 0 pictures of San Jose :)

Logistics

When to visit – We visited in the last week of November, right after Thanksgiving. The first half of the trip was pretty rainy. November is the end of rainy season in Costa Rica -- it’s probably worth trying to visit squarely in the non-rainy season (which starts in December) to be safe.

Driving in Costa Rica – We had a few people recommend we hire a driver to take us around. We personally prefer not to deal with drivers (especially after our poor/scammy experience in Kerala) and liked the flexibility of doing our own driving. The only leg that I thought was so unpleasant as to maybe make a driver useful was Manuel Antonio to San Jose. Luckily, S is a very good driver and we made it just fine.

Renting a car – We were glad to have a 4x4 car for the potholed and muddy roads. Maybe look at other agencies than Hertz given their poor reviews on Google. And FYI, Costa Rica requires purchasing liability insurance directly from the rental car company (we didn’t know this until we arrived and were informed by the Hertz agent).

Vegetarian food – The traditional breakfast of eggs, rice and beans, and plantains was proteinful and delicious, but other than that the vegetarian food at the resorts was generally pretty sad (lots of bland pastas and occasionally a veggie burger with not-crispy fries). Getting enough protein was difficult.

Health & Sanitation – The CDC states that it’s better to drink bottled water in Costa Rica. Some of our hotels told us the water there was potable, but we stuck with bottled water to be safe. The CDC also warns of mosquito-borne diseases, so we were careful to wear long pants and sleeves most of the time and (when it was unbearable) to wear plenty of bug spray.

Currency – The currency, the Costa Rican colon, was exchanging at approximately 530:1 USD when we visited. We never used cash – credit card worked fine everywhere, including at toll booths on the highway and at the national parks. The only place where cash might be needed is perhaps if you take a public bus, like to/from Manuel Antonio National Park (I don’t know for sure how payment for public transit works in Costa Rica).

#costa rica #arenal #monteverde #manuel antonio

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