Costa Rica Rainforest and Cloud Forest

I don’t think I qualify as “widely traveled,” but having been to twelve foreign countries in Central and South America and Europe, I’d say that Costa Rica is the most convenient country to visit of any that I’ve been to. Unlike going anywhere in Europe, you don’t have to spend 24 hours in airplanes and airports, only to find yourself facing a new day during what ought to be the middle of the night. (Costa Rica is in the Central time zone, like Texas and the Midwest.) Unlike staying in Mexico, you don’t have to worry about getting cheated when it comes time to settle a bill. Unlike traveling in Peru and several other Latin American countries, you don’t have to worry about armed rebels who might abduct or otherwise terrorize tourists. Unlike in nearly every non-English-speaking country, Costa Ricans won’t hold it against you if you don’t even try to speak a few words in their language. In fact, unless you speak Spanish fluently, they probably won’t even give you a chance to practice. Most of the service personnel I encountered in hotels, restaurants, and museums spoke clearer English than many California-born Hispanics. At the two lodges where we stayed – Lapa Rios and Monteverde – all of the people greeted and served us with a politeness that bordered on excessive. Every word of gracias on our part was countered with an emphatic con mucho gusto! It was clear that tourism is an important part of the Costa Rican economy, and I suspected that the people who run these resorts coach their employees to go overboard in treating the guests courteously.

The capital city, San José, doesn’t have much to rave about. You can’t call it a pretty city. But the poverty doesn’t appear to be as severe as in other Latin American countries. True, during a walk the first night from the Hotel Rosa del Paseo to the downtown area, passing through ten rather blighted blocks, Maryl and I passed some beggars and saw several people sleeping on the streets beneath sheets of cardboard, but you find the same thing in cities in the States. Perhaps the best thing San José has to offer is three museums: the Museo de Oro Precolumbiano, the Museo de Jade, and the Museo Nacional. These exhibit gold and jade items (such as jewelry, animal figures, shaman’s tokens), as well as stone and ceramic artifacts produced by skilled craftsmen during the 1,500 or so years prior to the arrival of Columbus (who actually set foot on these shores on his fourth voyage to the Americas and applied the name “Costa Rica”). For some reason, unlike the Incas to the south or the Maya or Aztecs to the north, we don’t have a common name for the native inhabitants of the Costa Rican area. Perhaps because they weren’t as unified, and they didn’t leave us any monumental cities – just a guess. Compared to those other lands, evidently, there wasn’t a wealth of gold or an abundance of “Indian” labor to exploit, so the conquest of this region doesn’t figure large in our history books.

Even visiting remote areas – the rainforest and the cloud forest – posed fewer problems than I expected in the tropics. During five days in the wild, surprisingly, I found only one mosquito and few other flying insects except for butterflies and moths. Mosquitoes thrive, and the risk of malaria exists, mostly in the moister lowlands near the Caribbean coast, across the country from the Osa Peninsula where we stayed. And we weren’t even hampered by rain during three days in the rainforest. January marks the beginning of the dry season and, as it happened, we experienced rain only during one night of our stay. The clouds cleared by morning, leaving the trails slimy enough to require walking with a stick, but not so muddy that the soles of your shoes sink into it. In the cloud forest we encountered little precipitation other than a few water droplets deposited on the treetops by a light mist that drifted over the ridge.

And, as you’ll see, the accommodations were luxurious – more so than most of the foreign hotels where I’ve stayed. My only complaint concerns the roads. . . .

Part 1 - Lapa Rios   

Part 2 - Monteverde