Costa Rica report

It’s a small country with treacherous, narrow roads, and with lovely people that don’t care much for road signs, but that will guide you gladly, in Spanish, to wherever you want to go. About 20% of the country surface is a national park, and rightfully so, as they host many microclimates, and rare species of plants and animals. Everything is hilly and abundantly green. There isn’t a single tree that is a separate entity, but rather a tree supporting a vast number of other epiphytes that cover a lot of it’s trunk. There are orchids, butterflies, monkeys and lots of birds. (I was expecting to see macaws flying like sparrows. I was wrong there….there are lots of them in the wild but not as abundant.)





It’s a very tourist friendly country, with lots of nice and reasonably priced accommodations.
Stranded between 2 oceans, there are lots of beaches. We weren’t very bothered with them. There are lots of beaches in the Caymans. Instead, I was keen to see the whole rest. The volcanoes for instance…they host Arenal volcano, that at about 1600 m high is the 3rd most active volcano in the world. The smoke that you notice around the peak it’s actually smoke coming from the crater.

Another feature of the volcano are the Tabacon thermal springs, which is a luxurious resort that combines the green of the jungle and the hot thermal water into a natural spa. Walking at night in the discreet lightened jungle park mix with lots of waterfalls and natural Jacuzzis while a misty rain was falling was an experience of a lifetime.

Talking about weather, the country is very close to the Ecuador, in july they are in full rainy season and there were a few hours of warm rain every day. It was dark at 6 pm every day, which made the starting hours very bright and early….also because there were so many things to see and time was, alas, far too limited.

The rain forest is an experience in itself, tall and dark, abundant, green and noisy. They came up with 2 eco friendly experiences for a better observation of the forest, and they are called canopy tours. One kind are a sort of suspended, fixed series of bridges, hanging at about 40-50 m at the forest level, which gives one the chance to see the tree tops, and the upper levels of the forest. The other sort is a zip line, and with a harness and a trolley, one makes his way around the forest from one platform to the other, in a Tarzan style. The zip lines can be stunningly long; I went across one of about 500 m, crossing an entire valley. It was the closest I ever got to flying, and it was pretty magical.
Normal hikes are also a must in the forests, but likely they have pretty organized trails in the forest,…that also makes eventual snake spotting very easy. I never saw one but in a snake garden, but it was good for my paranoia.

The cherry on the cake was the last hotel, for the last night, only a few km away from the aiport (we figured, rightly so, that it’s best to be as close as possible to the airport in a country where the Panamerican highway, road number 1, is a strip of asphalt with two lanes and no markings and the incidental pothole…not that I complain, knowing our own national Romanian roads, but..). So, the last hotel was reproducing a 17th century multi columns hacienda, with an inner patio and overlooking a coffee plantation.





All a bit too rushed, a bit condensed, but what memories, looking back! Back to work, back to the sick animal kingdom, and dreaming of future holidays. Nevertheless, Costa Rica does come highly recommended and I can only hope future roads will take me there again, as there are still many things to explore….