Trip Report: Monteverde, Tamarindo, Punta Islita, Osa Peninsula
Nov 4th, 2004, 10:30 AM
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Trip Report: Monteverde, Tamarindo, Punta Islita, Osa Peninsula
We just returned from two weeks in Costa Rica and I figured I would post our thoughts on our vacation. For the most part, we loved Costa Rica. Just to give a bit of background, we are in our early thirties, are very active and adventurous, and have traveled quite a bit, both ruggedly as well as more up-scale.
We arrived in San Jose around noon and got our rental car and drove right up to Monteverde. We stayed at El Sapo Dorado for two nights and enjoyed the hotel--a rustic but large, clean room, and a beautiful setting. The service was also great, very helpful and pleasant. We thought two nights was a good amount of time there. Our first day we went to the cloud forest and hiked around with a guide. We were lucky enough to see not one but two male quetzals, as well as many howler monkeys. We ate at De Lucia that night and the restaurant was fabulous. The next morning we did the SkyTrek and that was also a blast: there are 11 ziplines including what they claim to be the longest, the fastest and the highest zip lines in Costa Rica. After SkyTrek, we drove to Tamarindo.
In Tamarindo we stayed at Hotel Jardin del Eden. The hotel was fine--we actually moved from one room to the other since our first room had a bathroom that was open to the rest of the room and we didn't love that. Our second room seemed as though it hadn't been re-done yet, although they assured us it had. We didn't love this hotel, and spent some time looking at other places while we were there--the one that we ended up liking the most was Sueno del Mar (although it was full). We knew before arriving that Jardin was not on the beach, but we pictured the 300 meter walk to mean down a cliff or bluff; instead it was through a construction zone and then across the street to the beach. The beach itself was nice, but was not welcoming for lounging. Our hotel's pool was fine but there was construction going on there too, which took away from the ambiance. The entire town of Tamarindo had the electricity shut off on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8-3, which also distracted from the experience (limited food and beverage choices at lunch and even late breakfast, no toast for example). We enjoyed taking a surfing lesson and we tried to see the leatherback turtles, although they didn't show up. Overall, our three nights here could have easily been cut to two, or even zero for our tastes. This is not a town we would return to or recommend. Part of this may be because we were there during the rainy season, so there was just a lack of energy in the town and hotel (many restaurants were closed, including Lazy Wave), and we also didn't find the hotel to be overly helpful. For example, they didn't tell us certain restaurants were closed when we asked for their locations, they mixed up the time for our turtle tour, etc. In general, the Ticos here seemed less happy with the tourism in their community, perhaps because there tends to be a younger college-aged traveler here.
From Tamarindo we drove to Punta Islita. We loved this resort. It is a beautiful setting with amazing food and very friendly people. This was a great "get-away" in the middle of our trip and felt like a little bit of luxury in the midst of the wilderness, but it is remote and there is not much to do in the area aside from partaking in the hotel's offerings and food?which was fine with us. (We had read that driving to PI could be difficult but we found it to be no problem getting there?we just called the hotel that morning and they gave us very detailed driving directions and a route that avoided the river. It probably took an extra 30 minutes.)
We left our car in Punta Islita and then flew from PI to San Jose and then from San Jose down to Palmar Sur to start our adventure on the Osa. (One note here: we had also read that it would be very difficult to drive down to the Osa; other people we met while down there did in fact drive to Sierpe and had no trouble doing so.) We first stayed for three nights at Aguila de Osa and we took a cab from the airport to the Sierpe River, where we got on a boat for the one hour trip to the hotel. While there, we did the Cano Island snorkeling tour and loved it. We saw dolphins and whales while taking the boat to the snorkeling location, and while we snorkeled we saw tons of fish including a white-tipped reef shark. We also did the hike to Sirenna Ranger Station in Corcovado National Park. We enjoyed this immensely and saw a crocodile, sloth, coati mundi, monkeys, etc.
About Aguila: we thought this resort was nice, but very over-priced for what you got. We had wanted to try out Casa Corcovado or La Paloma, but both of those were closed while we where there. The rooms at Aguila were very large?one thing we noticed in CR is that hotel rooms often seemed larger than they needed to be (except for at Punta Islita)?but rustic. Meals are served family style and there is a lot of it, e.g. a vegetable dish, a meat, a fish, but there are no real choices. There was only one meal where this was a problem, but it is something to be aware of going in if you have dietary restrictions. Our first night there we were the only people in the whole resort and this felt kind of creepy since it is very remote and there are no phones. No one told us what to do in case of an emergency and it didn?t occur to us to ask until we woke up in the middle of the night to the loudest, strongest rain I have ever heard. Luckily, we didn?t get washed away. Our second night there, another couple arrived and by our third night even more people had arrived bringing the occupancy up to five rooms. This night, our third and last at the resort, something happened that is worth mentioning.
As I wrote, all meals are served family style. In the middle of dinner, one woman went up to her room to get a camera to take a photo of the group dinner (there were 9 of us at this point). She came back a few minutes later to inform us that three of the rooms, hers included, had the doors wide open, the screens slashed and that her bag containing her cameras and passports was missing. Immediately everyone ran up to their rooms. As it turned out, rooms 3-5 had all been broken into and the people in those rooms had passports, cameras, clothes, backpacks, and lots of cash stolen. Rooms 1 and 2 (where we were) had not been broken into, presumably because the distance between the window and the door handle was too wide for someone to cut and reach through the screen and open the door. Of course, since two of the walls of each of these rooms is entirely made of screen, someone could have just cut a large enough hole in the screen to crawl through but that did not happen.
This was an awful situation. Immediately, everyone was worried and scared and also feeling pretty vulnerable. I kept thinking back to how we were the only inhabitants our first night and how flimsy those screens were. We had all been lulled into thinking that we could leave things in our hotel rooms (incidentally, this was the only hotel we stayed at that didn?t have safes in the rooms). The management of the hotel sprang into action and put out an announcement on their CB radio to keep an eye out for the thieves, and the owner of the hotel (who had arrived from the States that day) said that he would put out a $1000 reward to get the stolen property back. Everyone sat around the bar and waited to see what would happen.
Three hours later, the manager of the hotel and a few other men from the community returned with EVERYTHING that had been stolen, with the exception of one person?s baseball cap. Pretty amazing, since the value of the things stolen was much higher than the reward the owner claimed to put out (he told us he upped it to $1500, and the combined cash stolen was about that, not to mention the 3+ very expensive cameras, passports, nice backpacks, etc.). We were all amazed and pretty impressed by this, but it was also such a weird situation. Not being fluent Spanish speakers, we had to rely on the information that was passed on to us and it was conflicting: that night we were told the suspected thieves were two Nicaraguans and that the packs had been found on the beach; the next morning a police officer communicated that there is a group of 19-20 year olds boys who had done this in the past and that the packs were found in their hideout.
This was a reminder to us as travelers and we felt very lucky to have not had our room broken into (we had not brought our passports to dinner that night, but had hidden them in our rooms). The people who had stuff stolen were definitely the victims of convenience: the room that had all their cameras and passports stolen had left all that in one pack in their room; of the other two rooms, only one had a passport stolen and a wallet left in plain sight was not taken. Staying at a hotel in a very small community of 800 people meant that everyone around knows what is going on: people most likely knew that 5 rooms were occupied that night, and even which rooms they were; everyone in the area knows that meals are family style and that they start at 7. It wouldn?t be too difficult to case the joint. The owner told us that he posts a guard every night during dinner time, and that the night of the thefts was the one exception to this, but we had not seen a guard our other two nights and thought this was probably not an accurate statement. Regardless, a lesson to us, and all travelers.
We left the next morning on schedule (and we were glad to be leaving) and headed to Lapa Rios for two nights via a car and driver arranged for us by Lapa Rios. We loved our time here: the access to the private reserve was amazing and we saw more wildlife outside our room than hiking in Corcovado or Monteverde--monkeys, toucans, frogs, toads, lizards, etc. We went on hikes alone in the reserve and spotted more monkeys and a snake and saw 6 coati mundi crossing the road while we walked to the beach. We also saw two scarlet macaws while waiting for our plane to take us back to San Jose. The food was absolutely incredible: everything was fresh and very good and there was so much of it. The rooms were very nice, and the outdoor terrace and shower was lovely. We had a couple of creepy-crawlies in our room, but nothing scary and while our first night was pretty buggy (because of the rain, we think), the second one was fine. The people were very friendly and we loved hearing the eerie sound of the howler monkeys when we went to bed and woke up in the morning.
From Lapa Rios we flew back to San Jose and stayed at the Orquideas Inn. This was by far the most Americanized place that we stayed, which is not our preference when traveling outside of the country, but the rooms were fine and it was great for our early morning flight the next morning. And then back to the States!
A few notes: we were very happy with our decision to rent a car and actually wished we had kept it longer. Our reviews of this board made it sound like driving times were outrageous and that the driving was difficult but we did not find this to be the case. As I wrote earlier, we are young and adventurous so of course that colors our perspective, but we were not worried about driving at any point and never felt like we were driving too much or did not have enough time in a location.
Flying was also easy. We packed very lightly because we were worried about the 25 pound limit. Our duffel bags were under 25 pounds?closer to 20 pounds each?but our small backpacks would have put us over the weight limit since we carried books and toiletries in them. Luckily, our bags were only weighed on one of our three Sansa flights, and that time only our duffels were weighed. We never had to pay more for our luggage or leave anything behind.
We were also lucky with our flights leaving Punta Islita and then going down to Palmar Sur. We took a calculated risk and scheduled our flights back to back so as to not have to stay in San Jose over night (left PI at 8am or so, then arrived in San Jose around 9 am, and then immediately got on our next flight to Palmar Sur about 30 minutes later?as it turned out on the same aircraft and with the same pilot we had from PI). We were glad that this risk ended up paying off, but we were even told that the flight to Palmar Sur would have waited for us if we were late leaving PI; luckily we didn?t have to find out if this was true.
Overall, we loved our time in Costa Rica and got what we expected out of it: a bit of pampering, a bit of relaxation and a lot of adventure. Were we to return to CR, I think we would keep the Osa and possibly Punta Islita on our list, but we felt like going to Monteverde and Tamarindo once is probably enough.
Happy travels!
We arrived in San Jose around noon and got our rental car and drove right up to Monteverde. We stayed at El Sapo Dorado for two nights and enjoyed the hotel--a rustic but large, clean room, and a beautiful setting. The service was also great, very helpful and pleasant. We thought two nights was a good amount of time there. Our first day we went to the cloud forest and hiked around with a guide. We were lucky enough to see not one but two male quetzals, as well as many howler monkeys. We ate at De Lucia that night and the restaurant was fabulous. The next morning we did the SkyTrek and that was also a blast: there are 11 ziplines including what they claim to be the longest, the fastest and the highest zip lines in Costa Rica. After SkyTrek, we drove to Tamarindo.
In Tamarindo we stayed at Hotel Jardin del Eden. The hotel was fine--we actually moved from one room to the other since our first room had a bathroom that was open to the rest of the room and we didn't love that. Our second room seemed as though it hadn't been re-done yet, although they assured us it had. We didn't love this hotel, and spent some time looking at other places while we were there--the one that we ended up liking the most was Sueno del Mar (although it was full). We knew before arriving that Jardin was not on the beach, but we pictured the 300 meter walk to mean down a cliff or bluff; instead it was through a construction zone and then across the street to the beach. The beach itself was nice, but was not welcoming for lounging. Our hotel's pool was fine but there was construction going on there too, which took away from the ambiance. The entire town of Tamarindo had the electricity shut off on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8-3, which also distracted from the experience (limited food and beverage choices at lunch and even late breakfast, no toast for example). We enjoyed taking a surfing lesson and we tried to see the leatherback turtles, although they didn't show up. Overall, our three nights here could have easily been cut to two, or even zero for our tastes. This is not a town we would return to or recommend. Part of this may be because we were there during the rainy season, so there was just a lack of energy in the town and hotel (many restaurants were closed, including Lazy Wave), and we also didn't find the hotel to be overly helpful. For example, they didn't tell us certain restaurants were closed when we asked for their locations, they mixed up the time for our turtle tour, etc. In general, the Ticos here seemed less happy with the tourism in their community, perhaps because there tends to be a younger college-aged traveler here.
From Tamarindo we drove to Punta Islita. We loved this resort. It is a beautiful setting with amazing food and very friendly people. This was a great "get-away" in the middle of our trip and felt like a little bit of luxury in the midst of the wilderness, but it is remote and there is not much to do in the area aside from partaking in the hotel's offerings and food?which was fine with us. (We had read that driving to PI could be difficult but we found it to be no problem getting there?we just called the hotel that morning and they gave us very detailed driving directions and a route that avoided the river. It probably took an extra 30 minutes.)
We left our car in Punta Islita and then flew from PI to San Jose and then from San Jose down to Palmar Sur to start our adventure on the Osa. (One note here: we had also read that it would be very difficult to drive down to the Osa; other people we met while down there did in fact drive to Sierpe and had no trouble doing so.) We first stayed for three nights at Aguila de Osa and we took a cab from the airport to the Sierpe River, where we got on a boat for the one hour trip to the hotel. While there, we did the Cano Island snorkeling tour and loved it. We saw dolphins and whales while taking the boat to the snorkeling location, and while we snorkeled we saw tons of fish including a white-tipped reef shark. We also did the hike to Sirenna Ranger Station in Corcovado National Park. We enjoyed this immensely and saw a crocodile, sloth, coati mundi, monkeys, etc.
About Aguila: we thought this resort was nice, but very over-priced for what you got. We had wanted to try out Casa Corcovado or La Paloma, but both of those were closed while we where there. The rooms at Aguila were very large?one thing we noticed in CR is that hotel rooms often seemed larger than they needed to be (except for at Punta Islita)?but rustic. Meals are served family style and there is a lot of it, e.g. a vegetable dish, a meat, a fish, but there are no real choices. There was only one meal where this was a problem, but it is something to be aware of going in if you have dietary restrictions. Our first night there we were the only people in the whole resort and this felt kind of creepy since it is very remote and there are no phones. No one told us what to do in case of an emergency and it didn?t occur to us to ask until we woke up in the middle of the night to the loudest, strongest rain I have ever heard. Luckily, we didn?t get washed away. Our second night there, another couple arrived and by our third night even more people had arrived bringing the occupancy up to five rooms. This night, our third and last at the resort, something happened that is worth mentioning.
As I wrote, all meals are served family style. In the middle of dinner, one woman went up to her room to get a camera to take a photo of the group dinner (there were 9 of us at this point). She came back a few minutes later to inform us that three of the rooms, hers included, had the doors wide open, the screens slashed and that her bag containing her cameras and passports was missing. Immediately everyone ran up to their rooms. As it turned out, rooms 3-5 had all been broken into and the people in those rooms had passports, cameras, clothes, backpacks, and lots of cash stolen. Rooms 1 and 2 (where we were) had not been broken into, presumably because the distance between the window and the door handle was too wide for someone to cut and reach through the screen and open the door. Of course, since two of the walls of each of these rooms is entirely made of screen, someone could have just cut a large enough hole in the screen to crawl through but that did not happen.
This was an awful situation. Immediately, everyone was worried and scared and also feeling pretty vulnerable. I kept thinking back to how we were the only inhabitants our first night and how flimsy those screens were. We had all been lulled into thinking that we could leave things in our hotel rooms (incidentally, this was the only hotel we stayed at that didn?t have safes in the rooms). The management of the hotel sprang into action and put out an announcement on their CB radio to keep an eye out for the thieves, and the owner of the hotel (who had arrived from the States that day) said that he would put out a $1000 reward to get the stolen property back. Everyone sat around the bar and waited to see what would happen.
Three hours later, the manager of the hotel and a few other men from the community returned with EVERYTHING that had been stolen, with the exception of one person?s baseball cap. Pretty amazing, since the value of the things stolen was much higher than the reward the owner claimed to put out (he told us he upped it to $1500, and the combined cash stolen was about that, not to mention the 3+ very expensive cameras, passports, nice backpacks, etc.). We were all amazed and pretty impressed by this, but it was also such a weird situation. Not being fluent Spanish speakers, we had to rely on the information that was passed on to us and it was conflicting: that night we were told the suspected thieves were two Nicaraguans and that the packs had been found on the beach; the next morning a police officer communicated that there is a group of 19-20 year olds boys who had done this in the past and that the packs were found in their hideout.
This was a reminder to us as travelers and we felt very lucky to have not had our room broken into (we had not brought our passports to dinner that night, but had hidden them in our rooms). The people who had stuff stolen were definitely the victims of convenience: the room that had all their cameras and passports stolen had left all that in one pack in their room; of the other two rooms, only one had a passport stolen and a wallet left in plain sight was not taken. Staying at a hotel in a very small community of 800 people meant that everyone around knows what is going on: people most likely knew that 5 rooms were occupied that night, and even which rooms they were; everyone in the area knows that meals are family style and that they start at 7. It wouldn?t be too difficult to case the joint. The owner told us that he posts a guard every night during dinner time, and that the night of the thefts was the one exception to this, but we had not seen a guard our other two nights and thought this was probably not an accurate statement. Regardless, a lesson to us, and all travelers.
We left the next morning on schedule (and we were glad to be leaving) and headed to Lapa Rios for two nights via a car and driver arranged for us by Lapa Rios. We loved our time here: the access to the private reserve was amazing and we saw more wildlife outside our room than hiking in Corcovado or Monteverde--monkeys, toucans, frogs, toads, lizards, etc. We went on hikes alone in the reserve and spotted more monkeys and a snake and saw 6 coati mundi crossing the road while we walked to the beach. We also saw two scarlet macaws while waiting for our plane to take us back to San Jose. The food was absolutely incredible: everything was fresh and very good and there was so much of it. The rooms were very nice, and the outdoor terrace and shower was lovely. We had a couple of creepy-crawlies in our room, but nothing scary and while our first night was pretty buggy (because of the rain, we think), the second one was fine. The people were very friendly and we loved hearing the eerie sound of the howler monkeys when we went to bed and woke up in the morning.
From Lapa Rios we flew back to San Jose and stayed at the Orquideas Inn. This was by far the most Americanized place that we stayed, which is not our preference when traveling outside of the country, but the rooms were fine and it was great for our early morning flight the next morning. And then back to the States!
A few notes: we were very happy with our decision to rent a car and actually wished we had kept it longer. Our reviews of this board made it sound like driving times were outrageous and that the driving was difficult but we did not find this to be the case. As I wrote earlier, we are young and adventurous so of course that colors our perspective, but we were not worried about driving at any point and never felt like we were driving too much or did not have enough time in a location.
Flying was also easy. We packed very lightly because we were worried about the 25 pound limit. Our duffel bags were under 25 pounds?closer to 20 pounds each?but our small backpacks would have put us over the weight limit since we carried books and toiletries in them. Luckily, our bags were only weighed on one of our three Sansa flights, and that time only our duffels were weighed. We never had to pay more for our luggage or leave anything behind.
We were also lucky with our flights leaving Punta Islita and then going down to Palmar Sur. We took a calculated risk and scheduled our flights back to back so as to not have to stay in San Jose over night (left PI at 8am or so, then arrived in San Jose around 9 am, and then immediately got on our next flight to Palmar Sur about 30 minutes later?as it turned out on the same aircraft and with the same pilot we had from PI). We were glad that this risk ended up paying off, but we were even told that the flight to Palmar Sur would have waited for us if we were late leaving PI; luckily we didn?t have to find out if this was true.
Overall, we loved our time in Costa Rica and got what we expected out of it: a bit of pampering, a bit of relaxation and a lot of adventure. Were we to return to CR, I think we would keep the Osa and possibly Punta Islita on our list, but we felt like going to Monteverde and Tamarindo once is probably enough.
Happy travels!
Nov 4th, 2004, 10:55 AM
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Glad you had a good time. sorry about the stress at the end of the trip. Unfortunately it does happen in CA- even in the nice places. Good friends just returned from a honeymoon in Belize. During their last few days at Turtle Inn( francis ford copala SP??) a neighboring cabinia was broken into while occupied. The husband got out of bed and stepped on their thief- It would be scary
We too loved Punta Islita. Is the food and service still as good as we thought it was during our stay?
We too loved Punta Islita. Is the food and service still as good as we thought it was during our stay?
Nov 4th, 2004, 11:44 AM
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So sorry to hear of your scare on the Osa. What an unnerving thing to have happen. I think we all get lulled into a false sense of security because most people in CR are so friendly and helpful. There is definitely that other element (increasingly) and it is smart to take every precaution possible with anything of importance.
I have started packing baggy shorts with zip pockets and I keep my money and credit card on my person at all times (at least most of it). But I never have it all in the same place. We usually try to put our passport inside a book or other obscure place when a safety deposit box is unavailable. And carry a photocopy on your person.
Otherwise, I am glad you enjoyed yourselves. Do give Tamarindo another chance! I think you would like it in July!
I have started packing baggy shorts with zip pockets and I keep my money and credit card on my person at all times (at least most of it). But I never have it all in the same place. We usually try to put our passport inside a book or other obscure place when a safety deposit box is unavailable. And carry a photocopy on your person.
Otherwise, I am glad you enjoyed yourselves. Do give Tamarindo another chance! I think you would like it in July!
Nov 4th, 2004, 12:34 PM
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Thanks for a great report and sorry to hear about the happenings on Osa. I have to agree with you not liking Tamarindo. I used to like it a lot but the last visit (August 2003) convinced me not to recommend it any more. We stayed at Jardin del Eden a few years ago and did not enjoy it at all - your observations rang very true. If you decide to give Tamarindo another chance, I would recommend Capitan Suizo (it is right on the beach - the quiet end). I think Sueno del Mar's location is also very good.
Glad to read a good review of Lapa Rios. We stayed there during our second trip to Costa Rica and enjoyed it. We though the food was really good and the parade of animals right next to our deck was amazing.
Glad to read a good review of Lapa Rios. We stayed there during our second trip to Costa Rica and enjoyed it. We though the food was really good and the parade of animals right next to our deck was amazing.
Nov 4th, 2004, 03:43 PM
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Wow, what a traumatic introduction to CR! I'm relieved that the story had a happy ending.
My husband and I mostly carried important items like photographic equipment on us wherever we went on our recent trip, but at times it was just not convenient. We left our passports in our luggage, locked in a room at our bandb, and took copies with us around CR.
Your experience reminds us that crime can happen to anybody, anywhere. Your point about convenience being a key factor in whether a particular room is broken into is excellent - I for one intend to pay a bit more attention to those details on our return visit. It's easy to become complacent in such a laid-back environment!
Yes, the Osa merits a second {and third, and fourth...} visit in my book too. Isn't the wildlife amazing? Lapa Rios sounds wonderful. Thanks for the excellent report.
My husband and I mostly carried important items like photographic equipment on us wherever we went on our recent trip, but at times it was just not convenient. We left our passports in our luggage, locked in a room at our bandb, and took copies with us around CR.
Your experience reminds us that crime can happen to anybody, anywhere. Your point about convenience being a key factor in whether a particular room is broken into is excellent - I for one intend to pay a bit more attention to those details on our return visit. It's easy to become complacent in such a laid-back environment!
Yes, the Osa merits a second {and third, and fourth...} visit in my book too. Isn't the wildlife amazing? Lapa Rios sounds wonderful. Thanks for the excellent report.
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