Everything in Costa Rica works. Unlike much of the rest of Latin America, there’s no pressing need for land reform, the country has a solid middle class, enjoys political stability, and health care is widely available, leading to an average lifespan equal to that of the US. Add to that an overriding environmental sensitivity and some of the most beautiful landscapes seen anywhere, and you’ve got an extraordinary travel destination. Over 50 years ago, Costa Rica’s president, Jose Figueres, tired of worrying about military coups and interference, simply did away with the army, thereby leading to a degree of political stability during the past five decades that’s undreamed of by neighbors in much of Latin America. In fact, some claim Costa Rica is more democratic than the US, which, if you recall our last presidential election, bears this out.
Other things Costa Rica has going for it is a solid educational system (20 percent of its national budget), practically no illiteracy, and even a good water system. Costa Rica is what travelers refer to as a toilet paper country, clean and sanitary.
They invented eco-tourism here, another reason for visiting. With more national parks than almost any other country, Costa Rica has about 25 percent of its land under strict preservation guidelines (compared to 11 percent in the US), which means that all preserved land, whether a national park or not, forbids mining, logging and development. For that matter, it doesn’t allow much auto traffic, either. As a result, access can be somewhat dicey, but at least, unlike in the US, you don’t have to sit in traffic while trying to explore our once pristine natural parks.
What initially brought my wife and I to Costa Rica was finding a place to study Spanish. My college Spanish was beyond rusty, and I wanted to find a place conducive to learning in interesting, natural surroundings. After diligent Internet searching, we found an accredited school in Costa Rica that had branches in three distinctly different parts of the country. Besides that, they taught in small groups and required students to live with local residents, or Ticos.
The first of the three schools was in the Meseta Central, the heartland of Costa Rica — home to the nation’s capital, San Jose, as well as most of the country’s industry, jobs and population. The school was in the small town of San Joaquin de las Flores, outside a university town called Heredia, just 10 miles from San Jose.
The school we attended is called CPI, Centro Panamericano de Idiomas. There are plenty of other language schools throughout Costa Rica and Latin America with varying prices in different locations, so it would be wise to figure out costs, interests and location before you go. For instance, language schools in Guatemala and Ecuador are considerably cheaper, so it depends on what type of experience you’re looking for.
The Meseta Central (Central Tableland), where CPI is located, is maybe 200 square miles and several thousand feet in elevation, giving inhabitants the best weather in the nation. High temps in the low 80s are standard for July, with cool nights in the 60s. This is where the population lives, so you get both good and bad news. The good is that movies, shopping, culture, museums and easy transportation are readily available. The bad news is traffic, congestion, crime and air pollution.
But this is a relatively small country, the size of West Virginia, so when language classes ended at mid-day, the school arranged numerous outings for the remainder of the day, away from the bustle of the city. Some outings were arranged with guides, while at other times, information was provided for those preferring to travel independently. Horseback riding was an option, as were visits to the several active volcanoes in the area. We managed a visit to Volcan Poas, which has one of the world’s largest open craters, but were unfortunately rewarded with a view of clouds and chilly rain. We walked over to a nearby crater lake, which likewise, was hemmed in by clouds.
Needless to say, when you travel in Costa Rica during the rainy season you have to expect cloudy vistas, rainy afternoons and impassable roads. On the other hand, you get cheaper room rates, don’t see many other tourists, and the rain keeps things lush, green and cool. Winter — our summer — is their rainy season, although July has more sunshine than other winter months. The peak tourist season is December through February, when it’s cold in the US and warm and sunny in Costa Rica.
For our next week in Costa Rica, we wanted to check out the beaches in the Northwest, so we attended the school at Playa Flamingo (Flamingo Beach) in Guanacaste province near Nicaragua on the Nicoya Peninsula.
During the weekend between schools, we traveled to Manuel Antonio National Park on the Pacific central coast — near a smelly, funky resort town called Quepos. But the park is a gem, and was created to keep the animals alive and the developers away, at least as far as the park’s border.
To get into the park, you have to ford a fast moving stream. This isn’t one of those cute little brooks where you barely get your shoes wet. Here, it’s advised that you watch someone else cross first, so you can tell how deep it is and don’t get swept away. It was only three feet deep when we crossed, but we heard from acquaintances who had to swim to their buses at other parks on the rainier Atlantic Coast. A personal highlight from this excursion was seeing, with my guide Flaco’s help, 11 sloths along one trail, a huge boa constrictor in a palm tree, dozens of monkeys, and an agouti paca (a kind of large guinea pig).
The school at Flamingo Beach was similar to the first school, except it had a pool nearby and was in sight of the ocean. Although some say Flamingo Beach is spoiled because of a luxury hotel on its beach, it’s only a few minutes walk to several other unspoiled beaches nearby. A useful law in Costa Rica, one that every Tico is keenly aware of, is that 200 meters of marked beach or oceanfront is open and accessible to the public for each property. If there’s a luxury hotel on the beach, anyone can breeze through to the beach without the slightest feeling of guilt or ill will.
Our last week of school was located in Monteverde, near the cloud forest in the north central part of the country. There are several large national parks in this area encompassing high altitude forests, luxuriant plant life, hot springs, volcanoes, animals, and a high level of eco-tourism. Despite the huge number of visitors, the area is unique enough to absorb visitors without destroying the very ecosystems they’re trying to protect.
One way they keep visitors in check is by having perhaps the worst roads in the republic. It’s hard to imagine roads this bad were created and not found, but many residents want the roads to remain as they are to keep the traffic either out or moving slowly. I never saw a car leave second gear, and most car rental places won’t rent you a car if they suspect you’re taking it to Monteverde.
Monteverde was settled by Quakers from Alabama, who moved there 50 years ago when they heard Costa Rica had abolished its armed forces. As pacifists, they preferred a non-violent democracy to the race-based violence of downhome Alabama. They are still there, although the area around Monteverde has gradually become more Tico than Quaker; yet it still has a planned Quaker community ambience. Through terribly difficult work, the Quaker community managed to winch up all their farm equipment and eventually created the top dairying spot in Costa Rica, complete with a cheese factory, luxuriant farms and exceedingly well-fed cows.
This part of the country also boasts famous canopy and zip line tours which must be experienced to be believed. On the zip lines, you are strapped onto a cable, high above the cloud forest, where you travel like Ewoks, hurtling through space hundreds, maybe a thousand, feet off the ground with nothing between you and the ground but a piece of rope on one end and a cable to hold onto with white knuckled hands. It was raining when I went and while everyone was disappearing into the clouds, I luckily couldn’t tell how high I was off the ground as I zipped along, grinning maniacally. The canopy walks were slightly more sane, but were still quite a distance above ground. The bridges were narrow and wobbly, but at least you could observe animals and birds in the cloud forest while walking along at your own pace.
For our final week in the country, we picked the most isolated, remote and beautiful place we could find, spent a week figuring out how to get there, and were rewarded with the unending natural beauty of a true tropical rain forest with its verdant vegetation, creatures, shoreline and a neverending supply of rain and bug bites.
This was the Osa Peninsula, dominated by Drake Bay and Corcovado National Park. It remains beautiful today because of its isolation. No telephone wires or cables mar its beauty, nor is there even electricity. No roads either, just the camino publico, or public trail, or the more expensive private boats that have to be arranged a day in advance. To get there, you take a long bus ride south, then arrange for a taxi for another hour’s drive south, after which you hire a boat to take you down a river through Central America’s largest mangrove swamp, leaping out through a wild tidal surge onto the wide open Pacific and hurtle south for another hour, finally wading ashore to wherever you’ve arranged to spend the night. It’s not cheap, but the only complaint ever heard is that not enough time was saved for what has to be one of the most beautiful spots on earth.
Costa Rica is perhaps the safest country in Latin America, while offering beaches, mountains, jungles, and urbanity. In an area the size of Vermont and New Hampshire, you can find geysers and bubbling mud like in Yellowstone, active volcanoes like in Hawaii, glacially carved mountains in Chirripo National Park (like Glacier National Park) — where on clear days you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific — swamps like the Everglades, and beaches like Florida used to have, except these are still open and free, minus the traffic, subdividers, condos, people and crime. Better catch this while it lasts, as it’s possibly too good to be true and certainly can’t last much longer. Although, considering the country’s history of preserving its natural beauty, perhaps it will.
This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2001.
