Costa Rica

[maranella]

I need some advice from MNers who've been to Costa Rica. We're in the process of planning a trip ourselves, but we have a few questions.

1. Do we hire a car? We're both confident drivers who've driven overseas in lots of different places, but we could also book private transfers from place to place. Which would you recommend and why?

2. Can you drive to the hotels in Tortuguero or is it all canals and waterways around there? It sounds like quite a basic sort of place, so I'm just wondering what we'd do with the hire car if we need to get a boat to our hotel.

3. We're planning on doing the trip that seems to be the classic few stops - fly to San José, Tortuguero, Arenal, Monteverde, Manual Antonio. We'll be booking the activities ourselves. Did you do anything that was really fabulous that you'd recommend? Or, anything that you thought was a rip-off, not that good, overhyped, etc?

TIA 🙏

You shouldn't have any problems driving in Costa Rica. The main roads are in good condition and there is a lot less traffic than in the UK.

You won't be driving to Tortuguero. The only way to get there is boat or plane. You drive to La Pavona, leave the car, and then will need to take a boat from there which takes about an hour. For that part of your trip you will want to book a package which includes the hotel and the boat there and back.

It's a beautiful country. The one thing I would say is spend the minimum possible time in San Jose. It's a city and not a very pleasant one at that. We loved Cahuita National Park on the Atlantic coast and also Osa Peninsula on the Pacific side. It's not a big country so you can easily go wnywhere you want.

What time of year are you planning on going? We went in August and some roads were flooded and very little signposting but if not in rainy season should be OK.

Can I ask how Osa and Cahuita compared? We'd probably do one or the other.

Thanks very much @Aaron95!

We're going in for new year @Silkierabbit

I have another question, if anyone is around ...

If you visited the national parks, did you do guided walks or did you just head off on your own? My initial thought was to book the guided ones, because you get so much more out of them and guides point out lots of stuff that we'd otherwise miss, but a) the cost adds up if you do them in each park, b) they're anything from 2-5 hours long, and c) we'll have our 16 and 12 year olds with us and DH and I definitely get more out of guided walks than they do. So I'm thinking we do our own thing in Arenal - just pay the entry fee, get a map from the ranger station and go for a hike - and do guided walks in Monteverde and Manuel Antonio. Monteverde, in particular, this seems to be essential, because they only allow 250 people into the park at a time. Does anyone have any insights?

Ziplining in the cloud forest. I’m a total wimp but it was amazing.

Driving is fine, I would recommend a four wheel drive truck as it will let you get to more interesting places.
The only issue we had was that the trucks 🛻 didn't come with a truck bed cover so we had to immediately stop and buy bin bags to protect the cases from the heavy rain showers.

We didn't use guides because we had younger dc with us. We trekked for hours one day to see Scarlet Macaws, saw then drove a good while bad to our hotel. Only to see a group of them fly past our hotel window and nest in some trees on the grounds.

Agree with zip lining, we also did a nature trail and high bridges walk.

It was one of our favorite holidays, enjoy OP. There is wildlife everywhere, particularly loved the sloths.

We had guides though visited different areas except Arenal. Arenal was seeing volcano which could do by yourself. The rainforest found it useful to have guides to point out things and learn about their lives and also they dealt with a couple of snakes.

Loved the ziplines, we did Buena Vista and Diamanté which is seriously high and fast.

I'd love to try zip-lining. DS1 gets vertigo though, so I don't know if he'll want to do it. He's agreed to do the Mistico Hanging Bridges, so I think we'll see how he manages that and take it from there.

We've booked a Nissan X-Trail, so hopefully that will be up to the job of Costa Rica's roads!

As for guides or not, I think DH and I have agreed that we'll do a mix, so Poas and Arenal volcanoes we'll do with a map and follow the trails from the ranger stations (LP guide says that they're both easy and well-marked), then we'll do a night-time critter walk in Arenal with a guide, a guided cloud forest walk in Monteverde (or Santa Elena) and we'll probably do a guided walk in Manuel Antonio, although again this could be done on our own.

Thanks very much for all the tips and if anyone else has any, please let me know!

Driving on main roads is fine but lots of very steep gravel tracks just off these so you need a four wheel and to be confident.
I would do at least some guided - partly because they know the wildlife and so can point things out you wouldn’t have noticed etc. We saw lots thanks to the guide we had.
things are cheaper if you pay in local currency not dollars, plus the local notes are pretty with sloths etc on them!
its a beautiful place, enjoy and fab for kids (ours are fussy eaters so this was a worry but fine).

OMG Costa Rica is amazing, we did Pacific coast, if going for the wildlife get guides they see things you won't spot, we found more wildlife at some of our hotels than we did up in Monteverde even with the guide.
Osa peninsula was superb, we left our car at the drop off at a small airstrip, and were then picked up and taken down into Osa
one thing I would point out is the Local Police forces do 'Fund Raising' by stopping tourist cars in road blocks and handing you a laminated card in english setting out the cause ! have lots of small change/notes to hand
Im going back as soon as i can

things are cheaper if you pay in local currency not dollars, plus the local notes are pretty with sloths etc on them!

one thing I would point out is the Local Police forces do 'Fund Raising' by stopping tourist cars in road blocks and handing you a laminated card in english setting out the cause ! have lots of small change/notes to hand

These are both very good to know and not things I'd read elsewhere, so thank you! Did you manage to buy colones in the UK before you went or did you exchange there/withdraw from an ATM when you arrived?

I'd do guided walks everywhere @Digestive28, but our kids, who will be 16 and 12, will be bored if we do them everywhere. They'll be fine with having cool critters pointed out to them, but guides wittering on for three or four hours will have them moaning and wanting to go back to the hotel. I know my kids ...

We got money out the atm when there and paid for things on card when we could.
I would also recommend hiring surf boards if you go to the pacific coast with teenagers - you can get lessons and the sea is really warm

we booked drivers when we went and it was actually cheaper than hiring a car. But the driving looked like it would be pretty easy.
We also went down to Ulvita stayed in a lovely air b and b and went out on a boat trip and saw a humpback whale and her calf magical.
I think you'd still
see wildlife without a guide as everyone seemed to crown around when the guides spotted a sloth for example.
we did a night time walk which was great the kids would enjoy it i think

Our guides quoted all prices in US dollars, they did not speak that much but did point out a lot of wildlife and dealt with snakes. Where we were it was just us and them in the rainforest with noone else in sight and we would have missed things without them though there was a lot of wildlife was in our hotel - raccoon family with babies, coati, gecko, monkeys and tropical birds. Our Arenal one was the volcano and the hot springs so that was more could do yourself and the least interesting to us though still very good.

We literally got back last week from our Easter break, we did two and half weeks in Costa Rica with our boys 14 and 10. We hired a 4x4 and drove , it is not for the faint hearted but if you take your time and follow the locals to avoid the massive potholes it is fine. We did one night in San Jose to rest our heads, we loved Tourtugero and would recommend the hotel Mawaba Lodge the service was brilliant and the boys are still talking about the guides this week, you can only get there by boat so we had a transfer from San Jose to the lodge and then a transfer to collect our car which we had for the rest of the holiday returning it at the airport. I would recommend using guides we would not have spotted the amount of widelife they did because of their knowledge. From Tortugero we headed to Sarapiqui, then onto Arenal, from Arenal to Monteverde and then a few days at the end of our holiday for some R&R at Nosara Beach. Again like another I am a wimp but the highlight of our trip was the zip lining in Monte Verde in the cloud forest. The night time critter walk was our only activity that we were a little disappointed with. The sloth tour was great, the Cocoa Plantation brilliant the kids really got involved, canopy walks again brilliant, we also loved the river cruise we did which we did the rafting ourselves with the guide and saw all manor of wildlife including the howler monkeys. You will have the holiday of a lifetime!

Haven't been for a good few years but found hiring a car was much easier to get around and we were able to get car transports for water crossings.

Thank you all! This is all very interesting and is helping me to get a clearer idea of what we should do and how.

@toasty1 what did you and your kids particularly love about Tortuguero? We've pretty much decided to give it a miss, because it's so far from everything else we're doing and it's not even turtle hatching season, so I'm not convinced it's worth going. However, I could be convinced to take another look, particularly as you have two boys roughly the same age as mine, so likely to enjoy the same things. Which zipline tour did you do in Monteverde? And which night-time critter walk was disappointing? I'm likely to be bitten half to death by mosquitoes, so I really want it to be worth the discomfort 😂

Oh yes and where is the sloth tour? I'd pencilled in the Don Olivo chocolate tour in Arenal. Is that the one you did?

You won't see anything in the parks without a guide. Even with the guide it can be tricky! The tour guides are amazingly engaging and tailor thief's to the group. Definitely worth the investment. Some guides were really outstanding.

If you are interested in sloths, I can recommend a visit to the sloth sanctuary which is just outside Limon. The canoe tour through the sanctuary is great.
https://www.slothsanctuary.com/

Thief's? I meant tours!

We did a sloths living in the wild tour at arenal. No sanctuary. Those sloths were good and the tour on a private farm good, with lots of incidebtal wildlife too but the best sloth came for free when we went sea kayaking. Again, wouldn't have seen him without the kayak guy!

We caught the plane from San Jose to Tortuguero which was amazing, only something like an 8 seater and flies low so it’s almost like taking a pleasure flight, such stunning views.

We went in Oct / Nov time so we actually saw a mama turtle laying her eggs and then other turtles hatching the next morning as it’s cross over season.

we then caught the boat out (which again was a magical experience) to Limon and move up the coast to Puerto Viejo which is like a mini Jamaica where there’s the Jaguar Rescue centre and Punta Mona centre.

Hi If Tortugero is out of your way then it makes sense to leave it, in all honesty it wasn't one thing that the kids liked about it in isolation it was a combination of the wonderful service we had from the hotel, the guides, the boat trip there and out in the National Park. Re the sloth tour we did the Bogarin Trail one which was brilliant, the critter tour was booked through our travel agency so not sure of the name but I suspect most of them are the same in the forest with a torch and you may or may not see something interesting, we didn't! Zipline was in Monteverde with Sky Trek we did 2 days activities with them the first day the canopy walk, reptiles and butterflies tours and the second day the ziplines, hope this helps