Pura Vida

Pura Vida

A quick jaunt through Costa Rica

Pura vida, they said. They said it to say hello, good bye, all good, sounds like a plan. Pura vida, said the gringos, the travelers, the visitors, the zipliners, the surfers, the hippies on the beach. Pura vida. Pura vida.

Pura vida, said the Costa Ricans. They said it genuinely to each other, ironically to the tourists. As a catchphrase, it has a nice ring. As a lifestyle, it is enviable. Pure life. I can see why tourists appropriated it and locals have bottled it up for sale.

Did you know that some scorpions glow under UV light? I didn’t.

Costa Rica is a wonderland with literally everything you can want. Hedonistic food—chocolate and coffee abound. Warm sandy beaches if you want them, or cool misty mountains. Astonishing wildlife in every color ever seen in the seas and skies. Sloths? Check. Toucans? Check. Snakes of a rather dismaying variety? Check. Scorpions that glow in the dark?! Massive, big, oh-my-god-look-at-that yes.

Good healthcare, fairly decent roads (even the unpaved parts are well maintained), friendly people…the list of Costa Rica’s virtues goes on and on.

With only a short visit to my name, I can’t pretend to be an expert. I can only talk about what I experienced. And it was (with the exception of a few too many mosquitos) pretty damn good.

I started in San Jose, which, honesty compels me to say, is not my favorite capital city. However, I was very sleep deprived and it was a holiday so a lot of things were closed, which may have influenced my feelings. San Jose to me felt like one of those cities where a bunch of people decided to live in the same place for no discernible reason. It is a second attempt at a capital city—the original is not too far to the southwest in Cartago. Ringed by mountains and subject to some fierce winds, the back drop to the city is lovely.

The downtown area is less so. As I walked up a street parallel to the main drag through town, a taxi driver told me to watch out for the banditos as he handily dodged potholes the size of small planets. Google Maps was also notoriously unreliable about opening times, though it was very good for places. As a bog standard map, it did what it said it was going to. I found it worth it to stop at the Kolbi kiosk next to baggage claim in the airport to get a SIM card. It made grabbing an Uber and all of the other information gathering associated with traveling significantly easier. My travel partner got her US phone activated for international travel, which worked well, but I shudder at the cost.

After just about 24 hours in San Jose (which isn’t enough time to really give it a chance, I have to say), we rented a car to head for the Caribbean coast. Driving was generally fine. Costa Rican drivers appear to either stick to the speed limit like their lives depend on it, or just go blowing by at a thousand miles an hour, dodging cars, big trucks, potholes, blind curves that end in big drops and wildlife with a panache that leaves one quite breathless. Coming down the mountains, we ended up sandwiched between the bomberos (firefighters) and an ambulance and thought that was probably the safest place to be. Once on the valley floor, oh my god, it took forever. There was so much construction and every truck in Latin America was heading to the port city of Limón. As a not-very-patient-person, this was hard for me. It wasn’t relaxing like a vacation should be. But it was worth having a car on the coast, as the Mepe bus runs every couple hours or so, and only until 6pm and we had places to go and chocolate to eat that demanded a bit more flexibility.

We bypassed the absolutely horrifying Puerto Viejo in favor of Manzanillo, last stop before Panama. Puerto Viejo is one of those tourist hellholes full of people who anarchically think that because they’re staying on the beach, they can walk down the middle of the street with very little clothing on and that it’s beer o’clock all the time. Do I judge them? Yes. Likely because I have no patience for sitting on the beach and no confidence to parade around in a bikini. But I’ll save that for the therapist.

A storm rolls into Manzanillo.

We had a hike arranged with Carlos (@aracaribirdstour on Insta) in Cahuita National Park. A walking encyclopedia of all things natural, and with a very enviable zoom lens (he was working with a Nikon D900, which has a fixed lens but is was 20-2000mm and took great photos of animals that I thought were just leaves from where we were standing) we had a blast. It took us half an hour just to leave the parking lot, as he spotted two species of toucans, a rare jay and a frog in the toilet that had amazing coppery eyes. Our tour around the park had us spotting a three toed sloth, fruit bats, a coatimundi (looks like a raccoon with a pointy nose), lots of birds, a massive iguana in a tree, and six vipers. Super cool. I would have seen exactly none of them, except for maybe a snake, without Carlos’s expert eyes. Hire him if you want to hike on the coast. You will have zero regrets. My only regret was not upgrading my camera before I arrived.

We took our lunch and our leisure at the Chocolate and Bread cafe in Puerto Viejo which is very delicious and highly recommended. Then we headed back to Manzanillo to get away from the crowds and go walk on the beach. We were warned not to swim because there are dangerous rip tides, which I found surprising. I wasn’t going to challenge local knowledge, though, and we were content to walk and splash.

The next day we went to a chocolate making workshop with Ancel, which we booked through AirBnB. With explanations that mixed science and woo woo, Ancel was clearly very knowledgable in the entire chocolate making process, from fruit to mouth. We enjoyed tasting the chocolate at all stages, and eventually making our own chocolate balls which kept us fueled for the next few days.

After just two short days on the coast, we drove 2/3 of the way across the country to head to Monteverde and the cloud forest. We weren’t sorry to bid farewell to the humidity (I am a fan of warm, though, which is why we ended up in Central America in January), but we became well acquainted with a steady 30mph wind. The road was pretty good until about 15 miles from Monteverde, when we were suddenly on unpaved track. It was well maintained, and easy, though bumpy, driving. Don’t attempt it at night, though. There are drops with serious air time and very blind curves.

Our AirBnb didn’t really have an address, but fortunately our host seemed to be a minor celebrity in the area. He knew EVERYONE, and always seemed to magically appear when we needed him. He and his family had hosted exchange students for almost 30 years, so he was ready to assist with bookings and any questions we may have had.

One of the only hummingbirds that held still long enough to get a shot.

Our day of relaxation following the long drive saw us visiting the butterfly gardens, the hummingbird cafe at the entrance of Monteverde National Park, and doing a night hike. Oops. The butterfly garden is a nice place to see a bunch of different species, but it’s quite expensive ($15 per person) and if I’d been by myself probably wouldn’t have gone. The hummingbirds are similarly artificially attracted with feeders, so they’re pretty to see but it’s not really out in their natural habitat. The night hike was terrifying but awesome. It is dark af without flashlights and you’re very aware that 80% of Costa Rica’s wildlife is nocturnal.

The next day we zip lined and did a canopy walk, which was very incredibly cool. The zip line gives you the chance to fly over the canopy at about a gazillion miles an hour, getting mist hurled in you face and seeing absolutely nothing. I don’t feel like I’ve sold that very well, but it was genuinely cool, if for no other reason than you get to speculate what exactly you’re flying over. Somewhere in the forest, a sloth is going “Wtf was that?”

The canopy walk was extraordinary. We took our time, and poked along, trying to put our newfound forest knowledge to work. It did not go well. We saw exactly nothing. Well, that’s not true. We saw a turkey. Other than that, nada. But the bridges are super cool, and you get to fully appreciate what you’d gone flying over on the zip line. It’s experiencing Costa Rica’s forest from yet another angle, and it is superb. We heard rumors of people seeing the quetzal, but didn’t end up seeing it ourselves. It was the only animal on our nature bucket list that we didn’t get. Oh, and the tapir. But, you can’t have everything.

All in all, there was much more of Costa Rica I would have liked to have seen. Come next winter, I may well just run off for another dose of pura vida paradise.

My name is Jenny Sparks, and I've worked, traveled, and eaten my way across the globe, with a special affinity for the Middle East. Follow me on Instagram at @jsparksflying. All photos ©Jennifer Sparks.