A Trip News

Think of Costa Rica as a Rorschach test for travelers. Outlined on a map, it has no recognizable shape. But enclosed in tropical lines of latitude, with appropriate squiggles for mountains, coasts and interior borders, it's an inkblot for projecting travel fantasies. Beach lovers trace the craggy coasts and see hammocks swinging in the sunset breeze. The eyes of the nature-minded glaze when they note all the national parks. And adrenaline fanatics fixate on the mountains and rivers.
Costa Rica is tiny, smaller than West Virginia, but huge in versatility, with coasts on two oceans, coral-lined beaches and active volcanoes, luxury resorts and surf camps, roaring streams and rich biodiversity. Planning a trip for myself and my father last November, I set myself a challenge. How many Costa Ricas could we sample in just eight days? I settled on three: the rich primordial forest, the adventurer's playground and the beachfront paradise. After subtracting travel time within the country, we would have a day and a half to two and a half days at our chosen location for each one, time enough for a taste, at least, of the country's riches.
Eco-Tourism: Monteverde
I stared into the dark jungle, hoping to see something staring back. The blackness was not complete; overhead the outlines of banana trees let in a little starlight, and, of course, for walking through the forest at night we all carried flashlights. Like most tourists, I had come to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in hopes of seeing big mammals like jaguars, ocelots or tapirs. I didn't. Almost no one does. But 10 minutes with a guide on a three-hour walk our first night in the reserve proved that the plants and insects can be just as captivating — and as deadly.
The guide, who introduced himself only as Christian, combined the laid-back attitude of a surfer with the taxonomic command of an evolutionary biologist. He showed us an alligator tree, whose broad, conical spikes were developed to repel the elephant-size sloths that roamed the Americas as recently as 10,000 years ago. He grew animated as he called us over to look at a strangler fig, which begins life as an innocent epiphyte delivered into an unsuspecting tree's branches by a bird, then grows vines up to the sunlight and down to the ground, eventually enveloping the host tree and strangling it.
In a hole in the dead tree, behind the sinewy crawl of fig roots, Christian shined his light on an orange-kneed tarantula perched at the entrance, waiting for its prey. Why didn't it hunt out in the open, someone asked? Christian explained that tarantula wasps live in the area, waiting to paralyze a tarantula with their sting, lay eggs inside it and wait as the wasp larvae slowly consume the still-living spider from within. Let's see an ocelot try that.
Situated in the Tilarán Mountains northwest of San José, Costa Rica's capital, Monteverde is a Disneyland for eco-tourists. With its verdant cloud forest and 1,000 endemic plant species, Monteverde offers the pilgrimage to nature that many seek from the tropics. Since tourists are unlikely to spot all the wildlife they might wish to, private guides have always operated in the reserve, and in recent years, privately run zoo-like exhibitions have popped up: a bat jungle, a frog pond, a butterfly garden, a serpentarium. Add an organic cheese factory, a fair-trade coffee plantation and a half-dozen high-end hotels that vie to outdo one another with their recycling programs and renewable energy projects, and Monteverde has all senses of the word “green” covered.
Twenty-seven percent of Costa Rica's land area is devoted to national parks and reserves, one of the highest percentages for any country. Monteverde, which is the primary place marketed to eco-tourists, is between two reserves — Monteverde and Santa Elena — deep in the Costa Rican highlands. It is well developed, with hotels, several restaurants, shops and art galleries. It even has an asphalt road connecting the two reserves and villages between, which is curious since the four-hour drive through farms and orchards to get to the area from San José is rocky and rutted — a result, locals say, of an earlier desire to keep down the number of visitors (now, most would prefer that the government pave the road). It is an oasis of infrastructure amid the rural and the wild.
We stayed at the Hotel Belmar, off the main drag between the town and the Monteverde reserve. Most people make reservations for the various activities through the hotels because guides are recommended. For those with keen wilderness eyes or their own binoculars or both, it is possible to walk through the reserves unguided.
By Ethan Todras-Whitehill