Pura Vida in Costa Rica!

Hester van den Berg
Feb 3, 2019
9 min read

Pura Vida, the catch phrase of Costa Rica. It can be translated in to something like the Pure Life, enjoying what the country has to offer to the fullest. After an exciting and surprising stay in Nicaragua, we were finally crossing the border to Costa Rica, a country we were looking forward to from the start. Costa Rica is one of the most popular countries in Central America, among tourists from all over the world. Negative side effect of that popularity, is that it is also more expensive than the other countries we just visited. For that reason, and also because we wanted to be in Panama City halfway December, we decided to not stay for too long.

When we were in Puerto Rico in 2015, we were close to a bioluminescent bay. That is a bay where you can find bioluminescent Plankton (meaning glowing with light, when they feel disturbed). But, since the weather was not too good at that time, it was not recommended to visit. Since then, it has always been something I really wanted to experience. Reading information about Costa Rica, I found out that there was also such a bay at the Peninsula Nicoya, so I convinced Timon we really needed to visit that area. It was a little too far to drive there directly from the border, so we first made a stop for one night at a town called Liberia. After arriving at the hostel, we took a stroll in to town, not expecting too much. We decided to find a supermarket and cook a meal at the hostel. But, arriving in the center, we saw many people selling small chairs and we were wondering what was so special about them that made all those people sell them? We soon found out that there was a parade that night, celebrating the fiesta de la luz. This is, as we understood, a celebration for the start of December. Like a kick off for Christmas so to say. It was a visited by a lot of people, and fun to watch. Being the only gringos in town, it felt like a true local experience.

From Liberia it was a 4 hour drive to Paquera, where we would stay for the bioluminescent experience. We found a nice AirBnB, which was coincidentally hosted by a Dutch woman and her Costa Rican husband. The first thing I noticed when we arrived where a bunch of adorable puppies! Who can resist puppies.. Well, I can’t! The house was at the edge of the village, which made us feel like we were right in the jungle. On a recommendation from the host, we visited a beach close by. Just like you expect, a white beach with palm trees everywhere you look :). Since it is the end of the rain season, there is a lot of driftwood on the beach. The locals are busy cleaning it up in the period we are in Costa Rica, to prepare for the high season around Christmas. The second day in Paquera we take it easy. Timon tries to play some Pokémon with the 5 year old kid of our hosts, but there don’t seem to be any Pokémon in the area.. In the evening we head out to the bioluminescent bay, for a kayaking experience in the dark. I’ve never kayaked in the dark before, so that makes it even more exciting. Going out with a big group and one guide, we start kayaking along the shore, to a darker area. The lighter it is, the less you see of the bioluminescence. Suddenly we started seeing lights in the water, it was just like a night sky full of stars! It truly was magical, in my experience. I flipped the peddle as hard as I could, I mixed through the water with my hands, everything to get the Plankton to react and light up. Very special to see. After an hour or so, the guide says we’re heading back to shore. Timon reacts with “Good, I have seen enough and am ready to head back”. I was shocked.. How could you get enough of this? I think it’s quite clear that if you ever have the opportunity to visit a bioluminescent location, I would highly recommend it :).

From Paquera, we took the ferry to the other side of the bay, Puntarenas. We had read that from the ferry you sometimes can spot dolphins, so you can imagine what I was doing the whole ride to Puntarenas.. Without spotting any dolphins (a little disappointed), we drove from Puntarenas to Monteverde. Monteverde is a place in the middle of the mountains, full of rain forests and cloud forests. The drive there was off-road half of the time, but very beautiful. We past small villages and had beautiful views. In Monteverde, the first thing we did was a walk around town. We immediately noticed that there were a lot of gift shops and tourists. Even though we already knew that Costa Rica was going to be more touristic, it’s still weird to be in the middle of all kind of tourists again, after spending all the time in Central America between backpackers.

We decided to visit the Santa Elena Cloud Forest, since we never before visited a cloud forest. The difference between a rain forest and a cloud forest is that a cloud forest almost always is covered in fog, and at a high altitude. But, when we visited the cloud forest, there was no fog at all, so we had a clear view of birds and distant views. We took the longest hike available, which was just 5 km, but it still sounds cool to say it haha. We saw a lot of colorful birds, bright yellow ones and even some hummingbirds. Halfway we arrived at a viewing point, from where we could see the Arenal Volcano.

After the hike, we drove to a spot just outside the city, where there are Ficus trees growing. In one of them, which is hollow and very tall, you can climb inside to the top. With a little searching, we found the tree. On the way, we ran into an Irish guy we met before, at the hostel in Leon. It’s a small world among travelers :). We climbed the tree, almost to the top. The top was too small, so we couldn’t fit through to get to the actual top.. Strange experience. After coming down again, Timon mentioned that he saw a lot of spiders. I’m happy I didn’t see them, or I would have fallen down instead of climbed back down.

From the lush cloud forests, we drove back down to La Fortuna, a small town close to the Arenal Volcano. This town is called La Fortuna now, but it used to be El Burio. When the Arenal Volcano unexpectedly erupted in 1968, it destroyed 3 surrounding towns, except El Burio. The town felt so lucky, it decided to change its name in to La Fortuna (the fortunate). Again, this town was very touristic and the most tours provided in the area, we thought were very expensive. From the town we had a good view on the volcano, and in the hostel we could relax in some comfortable hammocks. We were both a little tired, so we decided to just hang around, do some work and just discover the town a bit. I think it’s a nice area which offers a lot of outdoor activities, and when you only visit Costa Rica it’s nice. But for us, it was a little expensive, for things we could also do somewhere else. And we had some amazing places still to go to.

Our next stop in Costa Rica was promising to be a adventure, a place we couldn’t get to with our car. After a few hours driving, we had to park our car and leave it for a few days, and we took a boat to Tortuguero. It’s a national park, known for nesting turtles and a rich wildlife. It is located on the Pacific coast, and only reachable by boats through the canals. We booked a package at a hotel, including a night hike, a morning kayaking tour, and a day hike in the national park. As soon as we arrived at the hotel we settled down, grabbed a bite and we prepared ourselves for the night hike. Ready, in our zip off pants, hiking boots, and our headlight on, we looked for our guide. Our guide was from Germany, and living in Costa Rica already for 27 years. He explained to us that we were going to look for the red eyed tree frog, but also that it was a small chance to spot it. The first 30 minutes I probably looked like someone who lost his keys, I was looking around everywhere, almost desperate to find something. After spotting a few spiders (female and male wolf spiders), small iguanas and grasshoppers, I figured it was better to give up my hopes. Knowing myself, I would be very disappointed if we would not have spotted anything more special at the end of the hike. As soon as I lowered my expectations, the guide whispered to us to get closer. He spotted a sleeping sloth, high up in a tree. Except for a furry ball, high up, you couldn’t really see anything of the sloth, but still.. First special animal spotted! Shortly after spotting the sloth, our guide was dancing and waving to us to get to the spot he was at. He spotted a red eyed tree frog! He was so proud of himself, he even run down the path to get one of the other guides to tell him that he spotted the frog. The frog was a bit curled up, so you could really only see his green back. But, as soon as the guide dripped some water over him, he opened up to reach for the water. Besides the bright red eyes, the frog has blue and yellow on his side and bright red paws (does a frog have paws, or hands and foots?). Still excited about the frog encounter, we spotted another one! Wow, this night couldn’t have ended better. That night, I fell asleep dreaming about all kinds of colored frogs.

The next morning, we went kayaking with a guide. The guide wasn’t planning to row a boat filled with 8 people all by himself, so we had to help him out and paddled our way into the canals. It was very quiet on the water, but after 5 minutes on the water, we heard a big fat rain storm coming in. Still as sleepy as we were, waking up at 5am, we forgot to take our raincoats. So after about 10 minutes of heavy rain, we were soaked. During the kayak tour we spotted a lot of different birds, huge iguanas, a caiman, howler monkeys and even toucans! Even though we didn’t start of good, we really enjoyed this kayak tour! After a quick lunch, we were picked up by guide number 3, for the day hike through the national park. It was a private tour, it was just the two of us. I think that during this tour, I’ve learned so much about trees and plants, I never knew there was so much to learn. When Timon and I get stuck in the middle of a jungle, we now know how to stop a bleeding with tree resin, what we can eat (termites are the best, they’re full of proteins!), what wood is good for making tent poles or tools, etc. We spotted a capuchin monkey, jumping from tree to tree. When the guide spotted my camera, he grabbed my elbow and pulled me to the best spot to make a picture. Halfway in the park we spotted some howler monkeys, playing around. One of them tried to swing himself to another tree, putting on a show. The funny thing was, he missed the branch he was aiming for. It was almost as if he was ashamed that he didn’t pull it off, so he quickly ran away. At one point we entered the beach, which would be our way back to the hostel. Suddenly our guide yelled at us “RUN”, and he started running down the beach. Not really knowing what was going on, I started running after him. He yelled over his shoulder “BABY TURTLES”. At that point I started running faster, that’s something I really didn’t want to miss. Two people were already there, making pictures of the baby turtles that were hatching. Our guide spotted it, and he just figured that there was no time to lose. And he was right, because they are so quick! They come out of the sand, and within a few seconds they’re in the water. So cute! I was very happy that we had the luck to experience this. We ended the tour in front of the hostel, where our guide plucked a coconut out of a tree and showed me how he opened it; just hit it against the tree. Delicious!

And that was Tortuguero for us, what a great experience! We took the boat back to our car, which was still intact and working when we got to it. Our last stop in Costa Rica was at Puerto Viejo, right at the beach. We decided to chill out there for two days, where we ended up doing almost nothing. We only visited a place called The Jaguar Rescue Center, which is not a zoo, but a place where local animals which are hurt are being taken care of. After they recovered, they are released back into the wild. There we saw a lot of sloths, even baby sloths, monkeys, baby howler monkeys, parrots, toucans, deer, snakes and an alligator. It was especially very nice to see that these volunteers work so hard to take care of these animals and help them to get back to their normal habitat. So much better than regular zoos.

Even though we think that Costa Rica is a little too expensive on some fronts, we really enjoyed spending time here. Spotting all the great wildlife was something that’s Costa Rica is really great for. But, we have to be in Panama before Christmas, so we’re heading on to Panama!

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