Costa Rica failed to meet our expectations in many ways. We had a lengthly 14-night stay in 3 locations baking in leisure and outdoors time in each spot. On the first day, we landed in San Jose and took a shuttle via Interbus to La Fortuna (next to the famous Arenal volcano). When we woke up on day two, we decided to visit the biggest waterfall in the area: La Fortuna Waterfall. It was early in the morning with no one on the trail creating a peaceful atmosphere. We got down near the end where I turned right and saw this beautiful misty, secondary waterfall right before the grand sight.
I called out to Stephanie to check out the magnificent waterfall. I distracted her, causing her to fall down the last slippery step and severely sprain her foot and ankle. Mind you that this was at the bottom of 500 steps — making the ascent impossible in her condition.
What sucks even more is that we were right next to the end, roughly 20 meters from the final platform to finally see La Fortuna Waterfall. I called out to the staff member at the platform and after about 15 minutes another member came down who spoke English. He and I took Stephanie by her arms and tried to make it up the 500 steps while she hopped her way up. After four steps it was clear this wouldn’t be possible because her functioning leg wasn’t that strong. Reflecting back it would’ve been nearly impossible for almost anyone to make it back up in that condition wet stairs and all. Going up 500 steps is already a workout, but imagine hopping on one foot all the way up while being in severe pain.
Our next attempt brought out a few big and sturdy Ticos. The four of us put Stephanie on a stretcher and started carrying her up. It was tiring and we eventually stopped when the paramedics arrived. This led us to our third and final method of transporting her upstairs. The paramedics suggested that two men carry Stephanie, with her in a seated position in our adjoined arms. By now we had 5 men and 1 female paramedic with onlookers waiting for us to pass while offering words of encouragement. The 5 men, including myself, took turns with two men at a time carrying Stephanie with her leg in a brace. Going up a few flights of stairs at a time, carrying the weight of an extra human being tired all of us out. When we finally reached the top I gave the staff members enough money to buy a few rounds of beer and felt bad that their shirts were completely soaked through only 2 hours into their workday shift.
Stephanie went into the ambulance and we were told that the La Fortuna Waterfall center covers the cost of ambulance, doctor visit, and pretty much everything except any medications. At this point the paramedic had done his evaluation and thought she had a sprained, but not broken her foot. What a relief for us! But, since we were going to be in Costa Rica for two more weeks and on the road for many more weeks thereafter we decided to go to the hospital just to be safe. The doctor ordered an X-ray and thankfully concluded nothing was broken, just a severe sprain. Stephanie’s foot was still very swollen even 12 days after — a testament to the severity of the sprain. We missed out on Arenal, which was the primary reason for our visit to this area but we’ve seen enough volcanoes and hikes that we were okay with it.
Meanwhile, I played the role of caretaker the first few days entirely until we moved to Monteverde. However, I did spot some beautiful birds during breakfast at our hotel.
In Monteverde, we spent the first few days resting to see if she would get better in time to see the sights. However, that wasn’t the case, so I went solo to the Hanging Bridges at Aventura, about 4 or 5 days after her injury. It was beautiful — but incredibly rainy and windy. Even with a poncho over my jacket I found myself rushing through the eight bridges. I have a pretty big fear of heights and with Stephanie not there I knew it would be harder for me to walk the hanging bridges. But, I wanted to face my fears and was actually fine the whole time. I would even purposefully look down without fear much to my amazement. There was just one bridge that spooked me a bit because it was about 400 feet high and a quarter mile long.
The next morning I went with a group led by a guide to the Monteverde Cloud Forest. This was the entire reason we decided to visit Monteverde in the first place. That morning was extremely cold even though I was bundled up in Columbia gear including one glove (the other went missing in some past country). We saw several different species of birds with the most notable being the Quetzal (bottom right), the country bird of Guatemala. It is a beautiful bird that is very rare, so we were fortunate to see it. We also saw a toucan.
However, everything we saw was at a far distance, which I think is true of bird-watching in general. Coming from a South African safari and the Galapagos Islands where you can go within a couple feet of an animal, this was disappointing. I know we are spoiled from those past trips, but it’s really hard to beat Galapagos if you are an animal lover. Staring up at motionless trees for the better part of two hours at objects in the far distance can’t compare to literally stepping over sea lions who are on the beach of a remote island. The highlight of the Monteverde guided tour occurred in the last 15 minutes when the guide took us to a tarantula nest, hummingbird feeder area, and we ran into an olingo. The animal sightings here helped make up for the relatively sparse sightings in the first 2.5 hours of the tour.
We then hopped over to spend 7 nights in Manuel Antonio National Park which is a mix of beach and rainforest. However, even several days into this trip Stephanie was still badly swollen and on her crutches so we stayed in most of the time. However, we had planned to spend two days doing our annual goals retreat, so that helped. We also saw these squirrel monkeys playing right on our balcony in the trees nearby.
We also spotted several iguanas. I like how this one was sprawled out like a lazy sunbather.
I woke up early one morning and ventured into Manuel Antonio National Park solo. I saw howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, agoutis, big blue butterflies, but the highlight was seeing two different kinds of sloths.
Our hotel in Manuel Antonio was right next to the national park set on top of a hill. We had most of our lunch and dinners on the hotel rooftop restaurant. I really liked the Costa Rican staple of gallo pinto (beans, rice, and an herbal seasoning). The food is becoming progressively more Mexican as we migrate from South America to Costa Rica since we were served corn tortillas during our first meal. Fried plantains were also tasty morsels, and there is the famous Lizano sauces which come in different varieties, which I put on nearly everything. My favorite is the red sauce which is akin to the Rooster sauce back home. Overlooking the ocean, forests, and beautiful sunsets were the best part of our final nights in Costa Rica.
On the last day, we took a shuttle back to San Jose to spend one night as we were flying out the next morning. Driving times across even short distances of Costa Rica are long due to poorly paved roads and forests that make a straight line difficult. Another downside of Costa Rica unaccounted for was the bad weather. Even though January is supposed to be dry season, we encountered a lot of wind and rain in many different areas.
Overall, our experience was certainly dampened by Stephanie’s fall. But, even if that didn’t happen we weren’t too enamored with the country. I think it would have fell somewhere in the “average” column, which actually sums up most countries we’ve visited on this trip. The only other major area of interest we skipped was the North West aka The Gold Coast, which has nice beaches, resorts, and bohemian beach towns. We’re not huge beach people though, plus we’ve been to so many beaches on this trip we didn’t feel the need to see it. Like most countries, we appreciated the experience of visiting Costa Rica, however, we feel like we’ve been there/done that and don’t see a reason to go back.
