hi, we're arriving in sj, flying to osa peninsula for 7 nights, and then would like to spend some time in the cerro de la muerte area before heading north to arenal and then possibly rara avis, cano negro or palo verde. does anyone have recommendations about how to get around after leaving osa? does it make sense to work our way northwest from osa through cerro de la muerte area by bus, and then rent a car in san jose for the rest of our trip? or should we fly back from osa to san jose and then rent a car for the rest of our trip? ideally, we would rent a car in osa and then work our way northwest by car and drop it off in san jose at the end of our trip, but i can't find any information about whether this would be possible or economical. any advice would be greatly appreciated!

We did this last summer. From the Osa, you can certainly fly back to CR and then proceed with the rest of your itinerary. We loved our bus experience, however. The hotels can help you work it out. We enjoyed spending time at places like San Vito and Savegre Lodge in the Cerro de la Muerte area. We liked traveling through Buenas Aires and San Isidro de General and Palmar Sur and Puerto Jimenez. It was fun! And different. . .

What exactly do you want to see in the Cerro de la muerte area? There are only a couple of places up there. I did see a big sign for the Albergue de Montana Tapanti. If it is Tapanti you want to see you might be better off approaching it from the Orosi area further north. Most of the time that area is pretty socked in with fog because of the clouds coming in from the Caribbean side. As you drop into the San Gerardo de Dota area on the Pacific side of the mountain the skies clear.

Unfortunately, there are no car rentals in Puerto Jimenez and unless you want to pay a hefty fee to have a car brought down to you your options are pretty well limited to the public bus which will take a good 6-7hrs just to get to San Isidro de El General from Puerto Jimenez. Cerro de la muerte is further north from there. The total trip from Puerto Jimenez to San Jose generally runs around 10hrs by public bus. Or....you could fly back to San Jose in about 45mins. Driving yourselves would cut the drive time down by several hours but again, there is a pretty good fee to get the car.

Another thing to consider it that you can always break up a bus drive with a taxi transfer. We took a taxi from San Vito to Golfito (rather than the bus) to save a little time and to have the opportunity to visit with the driver a bit. The cost was $35 for the 1 hour (and a few minutes) transfer. This is always an option for you. While it is true that the bussing and driving is time consuming, there are times when that is just the point--to see the country from the road when time isn't an issue. It offers a different perspective and can be very enjoyable! Do time your travel through the San Isidro (Cerro de la Muerte area) for early in the day to avoid heavy fog. If you arrive at San Isidro in the afternoon, you could spend the night, then see the Cerro de la Muerte section of the highway in the early morning.

I think you would traveling from Puerto Jimenez to Golfito (boat taxi), Golfito to San Vito by taxi. Spend an afternoon and night (or 2) in San Vito, then take the bus to San Isidro (4 or 5 hours) the next morning. The Wilson Botanical Gardens near San Vito are very nice to visit. You could even do that in the a.m., then take an afternoon bus to San Isidro (need to check bus times). Definitely rather spend time in San Vito than San Isidro--smaller, but unique.

There is a little hotel called the Hotel Rino on the main street. For $16 we got a room with fan, TV, tax, and breakfast. Who can beat a deal like that?! Laundry service was about $2 for 10-12 pieces.

Oops. Insert "enjoy" in the paragraph beginning with "I think you would". . .

Yes taxis are a good way to travel -I have done that many times over the years and yes being on the ground is a great way to see things if you are self driving or have a private transport that can stop and you have the time. I don't believe tzaluv mentioned how much time they had for the second leg of their trip. I thought I would mention the lengthy time by bus in case they needed that as a consideration for their travel time. They could actually drive to Cerro de la muerte in about 2 hrs from San Jose if they didn't want to take the long bus ride. I just like to give all the options possible.

Unfortunately, down on the southern Osa there aren't any real towns to go to within an hour or so of heading north. Palmar Sur is the closest. The cost would be huge to get up to San Isidro by taxi. Having a car delivered would probably not be much more.

San Vito is an interesting route for you to suggest from the Osa to head north. Having spent several days there myself a few years ago it would not have been the most obvious direction for me. I'm sorry I missed some things. Sounds like you saw a lot more than I did from your recommendation.

If you get back to the Osa someday I highly recommend flying. It adds a whole different dimension. We have actually looked down at King Vultures which are beautiful from that vantage point. You get to fly over Corcovado park and Drake Bay as well as Dominical, Manuel Antonio and Quepos. It is like having a quick overview and tour. You even get to see all the african date palm plantations that go on and on.

tzaluv,
Another possibility would be to travel by bus from Puerto Jimenez to Palmar Sur. The ride takes you around the top of the Golfo Dulce. Then you could take a taxi (the long bus rides can get tiresome) from Palmar Sur to Dominical, where you might want to stay overnight at the Pacific Edge, which gets very good reviews from Glover!

The next morning, hop on the bus from Dominical to San Isidro (1-1.5 hr). San Isidro is between 1.5 and 2 hours south of San Jose. Not sure how much a taxi ride would cost you on into San Jose on the Cerro de la Muerte--bus is, of course, very cheap!

If you have time and a couple of nights to spend, Savegre Lodge and Trogon Lodge are beautiful places down in the valley of the Rio Savegre between San Isidro and San Jose. If you stayed at one of these places, they would send a shuttle to San Isidro to pick you up. You can experience a bit of cloud forest in this area. This is an excellent area for birding, and a sighting of the spectacular Resplendant Quetzal would be a treat!

Our route down to the Osa last summer (with the intention of traveling through parts of the country we hadn't previously seen) took us through San Isidro, San Vito, and Golfito. We spent about 5 days getting there.

The "return to San Jose" plan was to be through Dominical, the route I mentioned to you above. Heavy rain and a washed out bridge about 5km south of Dominical prevented us from arriving in Dominical from the south. If not for that, it would have worked out well. We hired a taxi driver in Palmar Sur who, for $30, was driving us to Dominical when we encountered the raging river! One of the most amazing things was the discovery of that magnificent stretch of highway between Palmar Sur and Dominical! Wide and smooth, it had us wondering if we were still in Costa Rica!

As someone mentioned earlier, there are many options. Looking at them and making plans is half the fun! Enjoy!

thank you so much shillmac and jessie for the informative and enthusiastic replies! to give you a little more background: after osa (4 nights in corcovado and 3 nights at beach/ecolodge), we will have 6 nights and are hoping to spend most of that time birding (in as many different ecosystems from osa as possible, without spreading ourselves too thin). we've decided to spend 2 nights in cdlm (either trogon, savegre or el toucanet), 2 nights around la selva (either the ots station, selva verde or el gavilan) and would like to spend the other 2 nights at another birding spot (or possibly volcano). so while the trip up through san vito and dominical sounds amazing, we are looking for the quickest and most direct way to cdlm. since we will need to pick up a rental car at some point anyway, it sounds like flying from osa to sj and renting a car would be our best bet. another interesting option you raise is to have someone deliver a car to pj or palmar. do you have any info on who to contact or how much it would cost? thanks again!

Based on what you have described, your best option would be to fly back to SJO, rent and drive yourselves to Savegre. Marino at Savegre is the most enthusiastic birder I've ever seen. He will make sure you see as much as possible. It's a little hard to get him to "call it a day" even! Trogon Lodge (same area) also very nice. But Savegre would be worth it to me just to have Marino as a guide! Check with dollarcostarica.com and see what they can do for you as far as delivering a car. We (and many others) have had excellent experiences with them and they are a large enough company to be able to do whatever you need them to do. I don't think it would be a problem to have them deliver to you at Palmar Sur or even Dominical (which would be closer for them). Then you could drive yourselves over to San Isidro and on to the Rio Savegre and the remainder of your destinations.

Just want to second Shillmac's rec of Savegre and Marino. We loved it there and also thought Marino was an excellent guide. Last May we saw 3 quetzals before we even GOT to Savegre (on the road in). A female sat on the roadpost about 10 ft from us and then the male and another female landed in trees within 10 yards or so. We were beside ourselves! We stayed in one of Savegre's newly completed cabins -- it was lovely - large with a working fireplace and a great bathroom. It's a great drive down into that valley too! And maybe you'll be luckier than we were and see both coasts from cerro de la muerte. We tried (and enjoyed that adventure), but alas it was pretty cloudy.

Gotcha, San Gerardo de Dota it is for Quetzals! We also saw some silky flycatchers and other trogons. Generally, as far as I have understood it, the Cerro de la muerta area is the high ridge area along the highway which is what I was confused about. I believe they had a hike up to the cerro de la muerta area from Savegre listed as a tour from the lodge. This gets up to about 10,000ft and I was cool enough at 7,000 without going any higher. San Gerardo de Dota is a lovely valley. As the road winds down there are beautiful views. It is a much cooler area and will probably feel even cooler after a week on the Osa. We wore light fleece a good bit of the time. You will see lots of fruit trees and it is actually the apple growing region of CR. You will see a lot of fruit trees along the road.

When exactly are you going? During the breeding season you don't have to look very hard for those beautiful quetzals. There is a private finca just up the road from Savegre where you can just sit and watch them for hours. I had one fly within about 4 feet of me at waist level. There must have been at least ten or twelve there when we were there in plain view. We saw our first one just as we were getting out of the car in the parking area. They have invested a lot of time and money planting the special avocado trees for the birds. There is a small fee to go in but it is well worth it.

There are great plantings just off the bar area of Savegre and we spent hours trying to identify the many hummingbirds that came to feed. Being right by the beer supply was a tough place to be but we survived .

Marino will be a great guide. My husband went out with him for a little bit. Mostly we went out with Melvin. Probably not a good idea these days as we bought his Swarovski binoculars from him for a good price and gave him the less expensive ones I had. This was about 2-3 years ago. His wife was pregnant and they needed a bigger car so they needed the money. He was an excellent guide. He had been handed a bird book by an Evangelical missionary who was living there. When the missionary left she told him that he had better know all the birds when she came back. We definitely benefited.

I whole heartedly agree that you can see so much when driving yourself. We did our own driving for a couple of years but my husband found it pretty stressful and exhausting because, back then, many of the roads were not paved. Not to mention time consuming. He liked going someplace and having time to learn a lot about it before moving on. As we were trying to hit at least 4 or 5 new places every year, flying was the way for us to go. We do enjoy traveling by car with a tico friend these days and travel a lot slower. We spend a lot of time on little back roads where there is little to no traffic. My husband got to see a Jaguarundi this past august.

we've heard a lot of good things about savegre for birders. however, it will cost more than twice as much as trogon or el toucanet. granted it would include all meals and a tour but we're not sure that we need this. it seems that in order to get one of the good bird guides to ourselves for the day, we would need to pay extra anway, so our idea is to stay perhaps at trogon and then to try and hire marino to come out with us birding for the day. we also assume that we could go to savegre for the day or for a meal and check out their hummingbird feeders, etc. do you think that this would be feasible?

we will be in cr for the second and third week of february. is that quetzal breeding season?!?

as far as the car rental, it seems like it would cost around $100 to have a rental car delivered down to palmar norte. throw in the cost of getting to palmar norte from pj, and it's around or a little less than the cost of a flight for 2 from pj to sj. though it will probably eat up more time. thought it might be fun to pick up the car and then drive to finca brian y emilia, a tropical fruit farm near escaleras that is mentioned in moon guide (anyone have any info about this place?) and/or stop near rio chirripo on the way up to trogon. we are also still trying to decide whether we should go to poas or arenal after cerro de la muerte area. we will be spending several days around la selva and it seems that poas will be right on the way, although people seem to think arenal is a must-see. any thoughts?

the more research we do on cr, the harder it is to commit to any plan. there's way too much to see! thanks for all your advice!

You'll be able to enjoy the San Gerardo de Dota area just as much at Trogon, I'm sure. Your thoughts about that are quite reasonable. Our experience last summer was that we paid about $75 per day per person, including all meals. Marino's fee was $50. We stayed 2 days.

As far as Poas vs. Arenal, you really can't compare them two. Poas is Poas--a beautiful crater lake to view (if you get there early in the day) and some hiking in fairly new (about 50 years old) secondary forest. It's a 2 hour deal at most.

Arenal is an entire area! The volcano is the dominant draw, true, but it is always an "iffy" proposition whether you will actually see it or not. Arenal is a 2 day affair (at least) because of the hot springs, the Hanging Bridges, canopy tours, horseback riding, Cano Negro tour offered from there, hiking the volcano, waterfalls, and the list goes on.

If you get a chance, spend some time at Arenal. But, also, if you get a chance, do try to drop by Poas early one morning (before 9:00 or so). It's quite unique!

My husband stayed at Trogon when he was in that area this summer. He thought the place was prettier than Savegre although he liked the overall of Savegre. You can go there to just have a soda or whatever and watch the hummingbirds.

You will be there at a great time to see the quetzals. The avocados should be ripe and they should be all over the place. That is right about the same time we were there.

One route you could think about is through Braulio Carillo to get over to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui and La Selva. You could then swing around through Arenal and then on back to the airport area.

Unfortunately, you won't see it all in one trip. Heck we have been going down for just about 13 years now and still haven't seen it all. No wonder I keep forgetting things. I keep thinking of the next adventure. There is always something new and exciting to visit.