Costa Rica🇨🇷

Our second country in Central America was Costa Rica. We heard really good things about Costa Rica, especially about the wildlife, so we were very excited to explore this country. However, we only spent six days here because of how ridiculously expensive it is!

To get to Costa Rica, we crossed the land border from Panama and it was really straightforward and only took a few hours. From Bocas del Torro we got two boats from our hostel to the mainland, before getting a minivan to the border. This journey took an hour and cost us 13 USD for the both of us. Once we were at the land border, we had to get our passport stamped to confirm we were leaving Panama, before walking across the bridge into Costa Rica. To enter the country, you don’t need a visa or have to pay anything. Once we were in Costa Rica, we got the public bus, which took us to Puerto Viejo. The bus stand is down the first street on the right once you have passed immigration. It cost us 5 USD each and took around forty minutes.

Puerto Viejo

Our first stop in Costa Rica, is Puerto Viejo and we spent two nights here. There are hostels in the town, but the cheapest option we found at last minute, was an airbnb! To get around the area, we hired a moped for a day, which cost us 35 USD. We decided to hire a moped to save money on taxis, giving us the freedom to go wherever we liked.

National Park Cahuita
We got to Cahuita National Park for 8am, which is when it opened. The park is free to enter, with voluntary tipping at the end if you choose. We went early as we had a lot to do that day, but you can spend a few hours walking the trails around the National Park. One way can take around three hours to walk, but we decided to do halfway as our bike was parked at the entrance. We were lucky to see wild sloths, toucans and howler monkeys.

Playa Manzanillo, Punta Unca & Playa Cocles Beaches
Spend a couple days beach hopping around the area. There are a few gorgeous beaches that you can spend the day at chilling or surfing. Playa Manzanillo also has a small walking path through the jungle, which can take thirty minutes to walk and where you can see more wildlife and amazing views of the Caribbean coast.

Other things to do in Puerto Viejo

• Jaguar Sanctuary Park.
• Chocolate Tour.
• Experience the night life.

San Jose

🏨Stray Cat Hostel

From Puerto Viejo, we got a four hour bus to San Jose where we only spent one night here and had no time exploring. Even though it is the capital of Costa Rica, there isn’t a lot to do here, so we quickly moved onto our next stop! If you have more time, I would spend one day exploring the city.

La Fortuna

🏨Ceiba Hostel

To get to La Fortuna, we got another bus from San Jose, which took four hours. We then stayed at Ceiba Hostel, which is a ten minute walk from the bus station. It is a really nice hostel, fairly new and has decent dorms and a social area. Sadly, we only had two days here, but I would recommend at least three days if not more to explore. As it is currently rainy season in Costa Rica, most days start with incredible, clear weather but once it hits 1pm, sadly the afternoon is mostly full of gloomy clouds and intermittent rain. This is why you will need more days to explore as half of your time might include sheltering from the storms. Either way there is a lot to do in La Fortuna and I wish we had more time here.

The hostel offers full day tours for 140 USD each, which take you to the most popular sights. This tour is fun with the hostel as it is a chance to socialise with other travellers. However, for us, we found it incredibly expensive and decided to hire a moped instead for 45 USD. This gave us the opportunity to see all the sights that the tour offers, but by ourselves, which in turn saved us over 100 USD.

Arenal Volcano
The main sight of La Fortuna is the famous Arenal Volcano, a 1,657 meters tall volcano, which sits in the heart of the Arenal National Park. It is a dormant volcano, since 2010, surrounded by lush tropical rainforests, old lava fields, natural geothermal hot springs and Lake Arenal. From our hostel, if the weather is clear, you can see the volcano shining in the morning sunrise.

The National Park is a twenty minute journey from the centre of town, is open daily from 8am to 4pm and costs 15 USD to enter. You can spend the day hiking the 1968 Trails, such as Coladas and Heliconias, which take you over old lava flows and through the rainforest, where you can spot wildlife, like toucans, monkeys and coatis.

Lake Arenal
Lake Arenal is a gorgeous lake near the National Park, where on a clear day you can see Arenal Volcano’s reflection in the waters. There is a viewpoint near the lake which allows you to see this view.

Puentes Colgantes Mistico Park (Hanging Bridges)
To make the most of our day, we got up early and arrived at Mistico Park when it opened at 6am. Mistico Park is famous for its hanging bridges through the jungle. It is a twenty minute drive from the hostel, but the views on the way make it even more spectacular. The whole drive, we had a clear view of Arenal Volcano and the surrounding hills and rainforest were pretty fun to drive through.

Tickets for the park cost 72 USD for the both of us, which is pretty expensive, however, we had a pretty incredible morning, so it was worth it for us. There are two main walking paths that you can follow around the park, one shorter and one longer. We chose to do the longer route, which can take around two hours to complete. You can also hire a guide to go with you, they have wildlife telescopes and are really good at spotting things that you would probably otherwise miss. Sadly, as we went when it opened there were no guides there at that time, but we were still able to spot a variety of animals. As we walked through the rainforest, we spotted toucans and howler monkeys, along side an amazing view of the volcano.

Fortuna Waterfall & El Choyin Hot Springs
El Choyin hot springs are free to visit, and are a nice way to spend an evening. The drive is twenty minutes from town and there are different spots where you can relax in the pools.

Fortuna Waterfall is in the Arenal Volcano National Park, a ten minute drive from the hostel and is a stunning 70-meter cascade. The cascade drops from the dormant volcano into a vibrant, pool surrounded by dense tropical rainforest, which you walk through to get to the bottom of it. It costs 20 USD to enter, which is pretty expensive for what you see, but there are areas to swim and make a day of it. To get to the bottom, you have to walk down around 500 steps to the base of the waterfall and where you have the opportunity to swim in the pool. The waters are pretty rough in the main pool directly beneath the waterfall, which is fun to experience the power of nature. However, if you want a relaxing swim there is a second tier area with much calmer swimming holes.

Other things to do in La Fortuna:

• Chocolate and Coffee Tours.
• Sloth tours.
• Zip Lining.
• White Water Rafting.
• El Salto Rope Swing.

Overall

We would have loved to have stayed and explored Costa Rica for longer if we could have, but sadly time and budget held us back. Hopefully, one day we will come back and spend more time here. Puerto Viejo, San Jose and La Fortuna were the only places we stopped at. I would recommend staying at least one or two extra days at each place, which will give you more than enough time to explore the incredible country. There are a lot of other spots that were recommended to us and we would have stopped at if we could:

• Monteverde: The Cloud Forest.
• Playa Hermosa/ Tamarindo.
• Sámara and Santa Teresa.
• Manuel Antonio.
• Uvita and Dominical.
• Drake Bay and Corcovado National Park.