Pura Vida, Costa Rica!

By this time, you already know we aren’t planners. And like all our vacations, this one was also a last minute one. We booked our (overpriced) flights three days before we left for a 10-day vacation in a new country. After all, vacations are all about gathering memories and stories, isn’t it?

Also, most of our photographic memories got stolen when our car was broken into last month and our camera, memory cards and our laptop got stolen (if one more person asks me why we didn’t back-up, I will lose it). So here I am telling you our story through my Instagram stories, which are pretty cool btw!

We landed in San Jose, rented a car and off we went on our road trip taking suggestions from Google and random blogs. Here is the route we traveled –

Costa Rica

Arenal Volcano:

When in Costa Rica, you’ve got to drink some coffee, right?

We read about this hike to a turquoise waterfall, Rio Celeste and decided to drive there in dark, in rain, on roads full of switchbacks and gravel. On the hindsight probably a bad idea.

We stopped at an AirBnB that we booked on our way to there, but this place was so remote that by the time we reached there, we were starving and the hosts at AirBnB were getting ready to go to bed. But, the hostess there took pity on us and cooked up some pretty fancy meal. Also, did we mention they only spoke Spanish and we didn’t. That was interesting!

And for Rio Celeste, the hike was spectacular but due to heavy rains the previous night, the rain water mixed with the sulphur water washed out the turquoise color. Oh well!

Off we went to Monteverde next, to the beautiful cloud forests. Costa Rica is doing an excellent job at maintaining their ecosystems. We were thoroughly impressed by how they segregate their waste and keep the nationals parks, their cities and surroundings clean. Kudos to taking care of your biodiversity and ecosystem, Costa Rica!

After 3 days, our ears got used to listening to the chirping of thousands of birds wherever we went. Next we headed to the west coast to explore the beaches and beach forests!

Manuel Antonio has the best beaches and LOTS of monkeys!!!!

Our next leg was to spend a few days in Corcovado: one of the most bio-diverse places on this planet, home to hundreds of bird species, endangered species of monkeys, anteaters, Tapirs, crocs, Jaguars and more! But first, river crossings!

And Scuba diving!!!

I was reading a blog post and happen to come across Javier’s Facebook page. I decided to give him a call and see if he could take us out to explore Corcovado. He not only agreed but invited us to stay with him, which was the best blind decisions we have made! Javier is an animal whisperer and he was the best guide ever! But before he took us into Corcovado, he took us on a jungle walk at night for warm-ups. And the things we saw!!!

Corcovado is not easy to reach, we were staying with Javier in Drake Bay and from there you can hike along the beach to Corcovado NP but to reach the remote areas, you have to take a boat to the ranger station.

After spending a few nights in Corcovado, we decided to go spot some birds esp the Resplendant Quetzal, in San Gerrardo, by a recommendation from a friend that we ran into in Quepos!