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Away from the crowds: Costa Rica's hidden highlights
Most countries have a few tried and tested ‘must-sees’. Costa Rica is no different - Arenal, Manuel Antonio, Monteverde... And yet, we often recommend people choose lesser visited spots instead, where there's more wildlife and barely any crowds...
Cloud forest is arguably the most beautiful of Costa Rica’s ecosystems, with mists drifting across a mountainous canopy, rich with bromeliads, ferns and epiphytes. It’s somewhere your silence and patience are rewarded with sightings of myriad bird species.
None of which tallies with the joyous scream of someone hurtling down a zipline, or the throaty roar of a quad bike rumbling through the forest in Monteverde, Costa Rica's most famous cloud forest reserve. For a genuine experience, you need to look elsewhere...
By contrast, the cloudbridge reserves of Chirripó, the foothills of Costa Rica's highest mountain, are blissfully peaceful. This is a place for travellers who want to enjoy the forest at its most untouched.
You can hike peaceful forest trails to rushing waterfalls, or explore private reserves in search of some of the hundreds of bird species spotted here.
If you're keen on spotting the Resplendent quetzal, the cloud forests of San Gerardo de Dota is the place to do so. The stunning flash of emerald and red plumage as a quetzal swoops and dives is up there with our favourite wildlife experiences in Costa Rica.
Moving on, Arenal Volcano was once incredible, with molten rock spouting into the night air. Big hot spring hotels, activity centres and billboards proliferated. But it all got to feeling a bit too busy. And then the volcano settled down - it hasn’t erupted since 2010...
Our advice on Arenal is to stop and go for a walk if you're passing. But if it’s volcano views, fun activities and hot springs that you want, we'd rather take you to Rio Perdido, just beyond the northern end of Lake Arenal.
The lodge sits at the convergence of two canyons, one of which is criss-crossed with the latest carbon-fibre zipline canopy tour. It is brilliant fun whooshing along a beautiful canyon from platform to platform: always safe and always laughing.
Further up the canyon you can go tubing - a brilliantly simple set up of a large inner tube with suspended seat in the middle. You pop yourself in there and off you go, bouncing around as if in a bumper car. More laughter. More fun. Fewer crowds.
On the Pacific coast, on paper Manuel Antonio National Park has everything great about Costa Rica: lush forest, white sandy beaches, monkeys in the trees and macaws in the air...
But in reality, it's the opposite of sustainable tourism: crowded paths, gaudy restaurants catering to ‘international cuisine’, tourist tat and boozy catamaran cruises. Worst of all, it means hoteliers feeding wild animals to keep them around. Avoid.
On the southern Caribbean coast, however, lies the sleepy town of Cahuita and its national park. Compared to the crowded concrete trails in Manuel Antonio, you will see a fraction of the people as you wander peaceful tracks and explore the pristine beach and ocean.
The draw here is that you can snorkel in the protected marine area which holds Costa Rica’s largest coral reef. You'll see all sorts of beautiful coral and exuberantly coloured fish: over 500 species in fact.
Strolling through the park, you have untouched creamy beach to one side, forest to the other. Racoons, armadillos, howler and capuchin monkeys, toucans, pit vipers, basilisk lizards and, best of all, sloths are all around.
An added bonus is its Afro-Caribbean heritage. Reggae and calypso fill the air alongside the aromas of jerk chicken and curried goat. It adds a cultural element to your trip which may well be unexpected. And it's one you can share with far, far fewer travellers.
Lastly, arriving in Tamarindo, you'd expect to find a laid back, authentic Pacific coastal village. But this is no village: it’s huge, with houses and shops blocking the view to the sea. The signs are in English, some for sports bars. So Tamarindo isn't for us...
This is more like it. The coast around Ostional is everything you want from a Costa Rican beach. Friendly, beautiful, relaxing… and not a sports bar in sight. There's little development here because this is where most of the world’s Olive Ridley turtles come to lay their eggs.
A little further up the coast is little San Juanillo. There are still fishing boats here: some of the few left along this stretch of coast. The beach is also one of the very few with a reef offshore, so the sand is almost white, and the bay calm and wonderful for swimming and snorkelling.
We can loop all these hidden highlights - Chirripó, Rio Perdido, Cahuita, Ostional and more - into a tailormade journey for you around this wonderful country. If you'd like to see a trip idea for a starting point, take a look at our Our Ultimate Costa Rica Vacation: A Month of Wonders.
