Hi everyone,
I would love some advice on our upcoming trip to Costa Rica. It's our honeymoon, and we're both beach fanatics, so we are thinking of spending 5 days in Mal Pais, 2 days in Montezuma, and then flying back to San Jose.
For the last 5 days, I am not sure what to do. Here are some options:
1. Fly to Osa and spend the whole time at Bosque del Mar (looks amazing!)
2. Tour the Monteverde/Arenal area (too touristy?) and go on guided hikes and canopy tours.
3. Rent a car and drive down to the Chirripo area, and then onto Dominical area, maybe staying at Savegre Mountain Lodge and Pacific Edge.
4. Rent a car and explore the area around San Jose including Poas and Braulio Carillo, as well as local towns.

I'm leaning towards Bosque del Cabo, but am afraid we won't experience Costa Rican culture going to such beach/vacation oriented places. But at the same time, Bosque seems like a really unique experience.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I loved both Arenal and the La Paz/Poas area. We stayed at Arenal Paraiso, and Peace Lodge near Poas. It was last week and everything was pretty quiet because it's low season. Not overrun with tourists at all. Most places we ate and most tours we did we were the only ones there. Even the Tabacon Hot Springs were pretty much empty. Actually many times we actually had to drive around and find places with a few more people for ambience. Tons of places were totally dead. I loved both the Arenal and La Paz areas!

Good luck on narrowing down those choices!!! All good ones! We have done all of your choices except MalPais and Option 3. But we managed this in 4 trips.

Option 1 - Bosque del Cabo - IS AMAZING! Was there in February, could not wait to get back, before we even left. BdC will give you both beach and rainforest experience.

Option 2 - I am one of the few that enjoyed Monteverde more than Arenal. I think maybe because the variation of dense vegetation, while walking through clouds, just totally overwhelmed me. And I so enjoyed the small quaint town of Santa Elena, it's unique little shops, the coffee.

Option 3 - Is probably our next trip. Except we will add in a 2 night stay at the Rafiki Safari Lodge.

Option 4 - Always enjoy the central valley, and this will certainly give you the local culture to experience. If you enjoy rafting, you could add in a Pacuare rafting trip in this segment.

So again, I say - Good luck narrowing it down!

Thank you for all of your input and advice. It's hard to choose when everything sounds so amazing!

We have done the MalPais/Montezuma part of your plan--in fact, we've twice been to the southern Nicoya--stayed in Tambor the time before. We liked it a lot, but up against Bosque del Cabo, it pales! And as beautiful as Malpais was, 3 nights for us was absolutely plenty! It is very quiet there! We loved the down time, but were definitely ready to move on. I must remember, however, we weren't honeymooning!!!!

Because Bosque del Cabo is such a fabulous place, you could consider actually substituting it for the MalPais/Montezuma part--unless you are big on surfing and particularly want to surf there.

As dfarmer has said, narrowing down these options--whew! What a task!

You could do a 5 night combo at MalPais/Montezuma. That would free up 7 nights elsewhere. You could do Bosque del Cabo for 3 or 4--it doesn't seem like much, but you could certainly enjoy yourselves there in that amount of time.

I think that, with the remaining 2-3 days you would most enjoy the Arenal area with its hot springs (or Monteverde as Donna mentioned).
Savegre/Dominical is a great idea, but for honeymooners, Arenal just seems like a good spot. Especially if you could find the time to spend a day GETTING there, thus venturing through Poas and La Paz on the way.

Just my 2 cents. . . .

Thanks for your reply, Shillmac. I think we are going to cut one day out of Mal Pais, and spend one more day at Bosque. It looks amazing! I read your posting about Hotel Don Carlos. We are thinking of spending our first night there before we fly out the next morning for Mal Pais. Do you have any suggestions for our afternoon and evening in San Jose?
Thanks in advance.