We have been in Costa Rica for 6+ weeks and have seen both the Caribbean coast and the Pacific Coast, Northern and Southern ends in the case of the Carib and Northern and Middle in the case of the Pacific. We have wandered around in the capital, San Jose (a little under a week) and have headed up into the highland rainforests. We have seen volcanoes, almost always shrouded in cloud. We have seen the dry North of the country up near Nicaragua, theoretically we have actually briefly crossed the border (I suspect this is a tourist gimmick) and we have taken a lot of buses (usually not air-conditioned).
We have seen banana plantations (don’t eat bananas unless they are certified organic, really), pineapple plantations (ditto), mango orchards, papaya orchards, palm oil orchards (great for frying chicken, terrible for your cardio-vascular system), hearts of palm orchards (Darcie has discovered she LOVES hearts of palm), yucca fields (delicious however you prepare it, yucca, not the fields), coffee plantations and finally chocolate plantations (missed the tour though!).
We have seen three types of monkey (Howler, Capuchin and Titi (squirrel)), two-toed and three-toed sloths, some sort of giant rodenty thing (possibly an agouti), coatimundis, raccoons, lizards (leaping and otherwise), iguanas, birds of many stripes including Quetzals (yay), insects, spiders, frogs, bats and so on.
We have been way too hot and sweaty for comfort many days, we have or rather I have gotten sunburnt a couple of times but not badly, we have swum in the oceans, we have swum in the pools, we have had some very nice (but expensive) meals and we have had some very poor (but expensive) meals.
We have mostly stayed in small hotels or hostels and very much prefer the hostels – they are usually cheaper, have great vibes and cool people, not that the hotels don’t but hotels tend to have people that don’t mingle well or aren’t interested in such.
We have heard at least ten languages other than Spanish and English, mostly from Europe – French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Swiss German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and probably a few where I didn’t introduce myself and eventually find out what someone’s home country was. We have practiced our Spanish a bit although as expected not much since everyone speaks English.
We have day-hiked in half a dozen forests (longest hike 20k roundtrip), snorkeled in both oceans and seen many fish (Darcie even saw a ray and a small shark in the Carib – it was a “big” shark to her), went diving on the reef in the Caribbean which was murky (15ft visibility) but fun none-the-less, did a small amount of cycling (would have done more but the bikes are so close to falling apart in many places that we just couldn’t be bothered), swam in both oceans, went ziplining (including a Tarzan swing and a Superman line where you are hooked up to fly like Superman down a 1k zipline – hugely fun) and met lots of interesting and fun people along the way.
We have also had our usual, end-of-trip haircuts, Darcie’s is decent, mine kind of makes me look like I have a fuzzy tonsure, really just need to buzz my head but Darcie likes the idea of a flat top which just isn’t a type of cut down in Mexico or in Costa Rica. I can tolerate what I have this time and I think she has come around to the idea of a buzz. I have, though, threatened to take a razor to my scalp and just finish the job and work on tanning my cranium. As it is I need to rub sun block in. The funny thing about my cut was the lady trimmed my goatee, quite short!, and trimmed my eyebrows!! without so much as a by-your-leave (lol). She finished up by giving me a pretty good neck and shoulder massage. It cost maybe $7 for each of us.
So what do we think about Costa Rica?
It is beautiful in parts and decrepit in others and many people live in squalor, particularly in the wetter and/or agribiz parts of the country. Some of the roads are paved but lots are not which is hard to understand when there is little charm in bumping and grinding down a road for 30k to get to a named tourist destination such as Monteverde. That tourism has flourished so is more a testament to the desire on the part of tourists and travelers to see monkeys, sloths and volcanoes and jungles or to go surfing. While it is certainly possible to do this in other Central American countries, Costa Rica has for the most part a low crime rate (against tourists) and a well-developed international marketing program. There really is no excuse for the condition of the roads, it hampers the locals and local business and it hampers tourism.
The much-ballyhooed “eco-ness” of the country seems to me more hot air than reality, just another part of the green revolution that is so en vogue these days. For instance, almost no one recycles glass, plastic and so on and garbage collection is pretty hit and miss so that public waste cans are frequently over flowing. The beer and soda bottles are recycled but only if you return them to the store you bought them from so you can claim the deposit back. Little mom and pop stores make this easy (they give you a hand-written receipt with the amount on it) but big stores make a big song and dance, you need a manager, sign this, dot that and so on – it takes 10 minutes and thus almost no tourist or traveler does it because the amount is only about 50 cents anyway. Almost every sink has no stopper so if you want to shave (and keep you razor clean-ish), wash your face etc you must just run the tap which is impressively wasteful.
I have not seen a single solar panel, even on the “eco-lodges” or the big chain hotels (even the brand new JW Marriot for which you see signs all over the country). There is at least one wind farm for electricity but it is small, on the other hand I haven’t seen any big generating plants using coal or whatever to produce electricity since a lot of the power seemingly comes from hydro-electric plants. Of course a big chunk of the electricity thus-produced is actually sold to Panama and Nicaragua so the better-off people and big businesses have gas or diesel generators for the inevitable power outages.
The country as a whole is very expensive – pretty much on a par with the US. Accommodations run from the low hostel-end of things where you can pay about $35 a night for two people but you stay in a pretty low key room without a bathroom in many cases and usually quite stuffy (bear in mind that a Motel 6 can be had for not much more and you usually get a reasonable sized room with AC (that works), your own bathroom and total cleanliness) all the way up to $1000+ for deluxe shag palaces in gated resort communities. Food, even “local” food, is frequently exorbitant particularly for anything with the taint of Europe or America. You can certainly eat for about $10 a person at a local soda (not the drink, a local greasy spoon) give or take but we have had a hard time eating for less than $20 even when we are sharing and I only have one beer. This has been the most commonly heard story from people we have met along the way. How the locals live is beyond me.
If you come to Costa Rica with the idea that there is ancient culture to enjoy you will be sorely disappointed. While there was obviously an indigenous population, the climate here was such that not much has survived the sands of time and certainly no big edifices like Teotihuacan, Tikal or Machu Pichu were built. The draw is the country itself: the forests, beaches and wildlife and they are very nice.
Final thoughts: Costa Rica – nice place to visit for two or three weeks, maybe four, for a concentrated vacation where money is no object, rent a car, enjoy everything the country has to offer.
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