Exploring the National Parks in Costa Rica

We left Montezuma and took a bus and ferry to the capital San Jose. Bus routes in Costa Rica are limited, and you almost always need to go through San Jose to get from place to place. As the trip from Montezuma to San Jose took up a whole day, we had a quick over-nighter in the city. There really isn’t anything of interest in San Jose, and it’s not particularly safe or nice to walk around - there are lots of problems with drugs, homelessness, refugees from Venezuela, and prostitution (which we later found out is legal in Costa Rica. 

We decided to take an Uber from the bus station to our hostel as we weren’t sure how safe it would be to walk, and we felt unsafe enough standing on the street waiting for the Uber as there were about 20 men watching us sat in sleeping bags (actually our Uber driver told us we should have waited for him inside the bus station as it’s a very dangerous part of San Jose). Glad to get to our hostel, we ate and slept, and then next day got up early to catch a bus to San Gerado de Rivas for our next destination - the Chirripo National Park.

Having said that we would limit the number of national park visits we would do in Costa Rica due to the cost, we picked three that we really wanted to visit (Costa Rica has 28 national parks in total). Deciding which ones to visit was a logistical challenge, balancing entry costs, how hard it was to get there using public transport, and the cost of tours and things to do when we arrived! 

The Chirripo National Park:

The Chirripo National Park isn’t on the usual tourist trail and not many people go there, but we had it on our radar to visit to climb Cerro Chirripo - the highest mountain in Costa Rica (3821m). The hike looked incredible, it takes two days and you sleep in a ranger station near the summit, and summit for sunrise. But, what we didn’t know is that permits to climb the mountain are limited (to around 30 people per day), and when we tried to get a permit we realised that they were sold out for the next 2 months! We did a bit more research and decided to visit the National Park anyway, as there were lots of other hikes we could do!

We stayed in a small local village high up in the mountains, San Gerado de Rivas. It was much cooler here, and not at all touristy - we felt like the only gringos in the village! We stayed in a lovely guesthouse with a deck overlooking the river and surrounding mountains, and we could swim in the river from the garden. At night we loved sitting on the deck to watch the surrounding forest light up with fireflies (we’ve never seen so many!). 

We had two days in the mountains, so one day we decided to visit the Reserva Cloudbridge for a hike. The reserve goes high into the Talamanca mountains (from 1500-2600m), and follows the first part of the Cerro Chirripo hike. The hike we did was around 8km in total, and was quite steep at points! The reserve is primary cloudforest, and it was amazing to see all the trees and plants, we even spotted a few quetzals! There was a spot where we had a quick dip in the river to cool off! It was really quiet in the reserva and we hardly saw anyone else - it felt like we had it all to ourselves! We really loved it here, it was one of our favourite days in Costa Rica and we would love to return to do the Cerro Chirripo hike too! 

We spent our other day here exploring in and around the village, accompanied by the dog from our guesthouse, Estrella (or star), who followed us everywhere. We also went for a walk to find a swimming spot for a quick dip!

The Corcovado National Park:  

After another long bus ride we arrived in Puerto Jiménez, close to the border of the Corcovado National Park, which sits in the Oso Peninsular in the south of Costa Rica. The national park is considered one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, and it has multiple ecosystems: Pacific beaches, mangrove swamps, and lowland and moutain rainforest. It also has the largest area of primary rainforest on the American Pacific coastline. As it is geographically isolated and hard to get to (the main access is by boat!), the park has lots of animals and wildlife, and few visitors! The park is highly protected: you have to go in with a guide, and the daily/overnight visitors permits are limited. This means that it was very expensive to get into the park itself - £150 per person for a 6 hour day pass, or £350 per person to stay overnight!

We stayed in the most amazing hostel in Puerto Jiménez. When we explained to the owner, a lovely Scottish guy called Andrew, that we couldn’t afford to go into the park but we wanted to experience some of the rainforests, beaches and mangroves, and see as many animals as possible, he designed us an itinerary of free or cheap places to go around the border of the National Park. 

Actually we saw a lot of nature in the hostel itself, the gardens are around 4 acres, and sat on the border of the national park. Everyday we saw white faced capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, scarlet macaws, toucans, crabs, and there was even raccoons in the kitchen whilst we were cooking! We loved our stay here and wished we could stay for longer - the room was comfy (we got a free upgrade), the gardens were beautiful, and every night everyone sat round the fire pit to hang out.

On our first day exploring around the national park we hiked to a nearby beach, playa preciosa. The hike there was around an hour and it was hot and humid! On the way we saw a huge iguana (on the runway of the small airport!), a group of howler monkeys, and lots of birds. The beach itself was beautiful and deserted, and the water was so warm - like being in the bath at home! 

The next day we took a colectivo to Golfito - on the other side of the peninsular. The drive was on a dirt track and took about an hour, and from where we were dropped off we walked for round 3 hours on a path following the coastline, with beautiful empty Pacific beaches on one side, and rainforest on the other! We saw so many animals as we walked - vultures, 3 types of monkeys (spider, white faced capuchin and squirrel monkeys, we even saw a baby white faced capuchin with it’s mum!), more crabs, lots of scarlet macaws, spiders, a poisonous green dart frog, and a green pit viper. We also hiked up into the rainforest to a waterfall (which didn’t have much water as it’s the dry season). On the way back we stopped in at a hotel to get a cold drink, and they let us use their pool to cool off! We hitched a ride back to town with a lovely guy called Oscar, who stopped the car to show us a sleeping sloth and some unusual birds. 

The Cahuita National Park: 

After an amazing few days in Puerto Jiménez we were reticent to leave, but we had our next stop booked so we reluctantly got on a 6am bus to head back to the capital San Jose. We had to stay in San Jose another night, to catch another bus the next day heading South on the other side of Costa Rica - the Carribean side, to our next stop: Puerto Viejo. We stayed in a nice hostel room with it’s own balcony, but we didn’t really like the hostel vibes and we were kept awake every night of our stay by people partying in the garden. We also didn’t have aircon, and it was around 35 degrees most nights! But we did see a sloth in the hostel garden and got to watch him up close as he hung out for a bit and then swung off through the trees! 

We spent 4 nights here in total, and we enjoyed exploring the nearby beaches. A few of the beaches here have shipwrecks which were cool to explore - the one on Manzanillo beach is huge and right on the beach, we read that the Panamanian ship ran aground in 2017 and has sat there since! 

We spent one day visiting the Cahuita National Park, which sits right on the Caribbean coast. We got an early bus to arrive at the park entrance for it’s opening at 8am, and walked the full length of the park. The path goes through mangrove and then onto the beach, and skirts through the beach ans jungle for around 8km. The beaches here were beautiful and we enjoyed a cooling swim! The Cahuita park is one of the most visited in Costa Rica, and as we were leaving lots of people were coming into the park. We didn’t see much wildlife and we wondered if it was because there are ao many people. We saw some monkeys, a crab, a sloth and some raccoons (who tried to take Ash’s backpack!). 

Overall we gad a great time visiting the National Parks in Costa Rica, we were happy with the parks we chose to visit as we got to see different ecosystems and wildlife. We would go back to Costa Rica, and spend more times in the National Parks (but next time we would hire a car!).

Next stop: crossing the border to Bocas Del Toro, Panama