A cheapskate’s guide to Costa Rica
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
By ELAINE GLUSAC
Amid a September downpour in a beach town on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, I was reminded that I’d bet on poor odds. Locals had assured me their rainy season, from May through November, consisted of bright mornings and afternoon showers followed by clearing skies, at least most of the time.
Still, the rewards for risking rain were substantial, including low prices, fewer crowds and more availability. I learned this first hand as I was forced to cancel my trip to the Central American country twice in the past year, moving it from high-season February to less expensive May and finally rock-bottom September. Consider the car I rented from Vamos Rent-a-Car at the airport in the capital of San José. I paid $237 for a week, more than $400 less than my estimate in February.
(A note on currency: many businesses use U.S. dollars, others use Costa Rica colones — 500 colones is roughly $1 — and many accept both.)
Costa Rica has developed a reputation for being expensive in recent years, particularly as luxury resorts transformed the northern Guanacaste province. Tours that fly around the country to avoid its slow roads add to that impression. And Costa Rica is in demand; in 2024, 2.9 million visitors set a postpandemic tourism record.
So, in addition to traveling in the low season, I set out to see Costa Rica from the ground instead of the air. Adopting a destination-dupes approach, I designed a six-night itinerary around Costa Rica’s billboard attractions — cloud forests, waterfalls, beaches, coffee farms and national parks — just not the most popular versions.
Volcanoes and coffee farms
I started out with the closest destination to the San José airport, the Poás Volcano region, less than an hour’s drive.
Lush coffee trees climbed the hillsides as I approached Hacienda Doka, a 150-acre coffee farm established in the 1920s. The sole participant in an afternoon tour ($28), I walked the fields to the chirping of blue-gray tanagers and the plunk of ripe guavas falling from the trees. In an eco-friendly cycle, the birds, explained my guide, Jonathan Alfaro, eat the fruit from the trees that shade the coffee plants.
After a walk through a butterfly garden filled with fluttering blue morphos, the tour ended with a tasting of seven coffee varieties in the gift shop. I found even the darkest roast smooth (and pricey; a bag of beans cost nearly $18).
Back down one mountain road, up another and through a barnyard temporarily blocked by a herd of Holsteins, I arrived at Poas Volcano Lodge, a 12-room boutique where highland temperatures fell to about 60 degrees overnight, prompting wood fires in the lounge and restaurant.
The property offered forest trails, a library filled with birding books and my stylishly rustic room with beamed ceilings and plush bedding ($104, including breakfast). Dinner (fish and chicken entrees, 8,600 colones, or about $17) was additional but breakfast was substantial with eggs cooked to order and gallo pinto (rice and beans).
The sky was clear as I drove to nearby Poás Volcano National Park ($15 entry; many national parks require reservations and payment at the park service website).
Steam billowed above the crater — one of the largest in the world — where a team of park scientists flew a research drone, explaining that Poás had erupted the day before in an ash plume.
Birds of the cloud forest
The 50-mile trip to San Gerardo de Dota took me south through the capital to the cloud forests of the Talamanca Mountains, a lesser-known alternative to forests like Monteverde in the north.
To reach the valley cut by the Savegre River, I turned off the main highway onto a steep, single-lane road — potholed, rocky and often missing guard rails — that led precipitously to the river bottom.
Simple lodges and cabins along the river cater to birders aiming to glimpse the resplendent quetzal, a showy bird in the trogon family with a red breast, turquoise neck, green wings and long emerald plumes that flow like ribbons.
In the past, I’ve stalked the quetzal in Panama and southern Costa Rica, each time taking long hikes into tangled forests. In this case, I arranged with my hotel, the Savegre Hotel Natural Reserve & Spa, to engage Melvin Fernandez, who runs the Quetzal Experts guide service, to lead me to them at dawn the next morning ($102 for two hours).
Near a sign warning of “Turistas en la via” (tourists in the road), we spied our first of eight quetzals.
“You are lucky,” Fernandez said. “In February, you will have 150 people on this road looking for the quetzal.”
The Savegre lodge ($125 a night, including breakfast) sits on its own 1,200-plus-acre reserve with hiking trails and a mountain deck for bird-watching.
In addition to quetzals and forest trails, the valley offered another attraction: river trout, served widely, including fried whole at Miriam’s (7,000 colones) and sautéed over pesto noodles (11,500 colones) at the tranquil Alma de Árbol restaurant near the hotel.
Waterfalls, beaches and wildlife
After adding a rufous-browed peppershrike sighting to my life list the next morning, I left San Gerardo for the coast, traveling south in the mountains and eventually west, descending toward the Pacific and a 20-degree weather warm-up, bound for the beach town of Dominical about two hours away.
The route went past Nauyaca Waterfalls, a two-tiered cascade creating a natural swimming pool in the Barú River.
Visitors can park roughly two miles from the cataract ($5 parking fee) and take a 4-wheel-drive truck shuttle ($32) or, as I chose, hike in ($10).
The muddy trail was a rocky, rutted road. But what the sweaty trek lacked in charm, the roughly 200-foot falls made up for in splendor, dropping into a churning pool that I edged into from riverside boulders.
In nearby Dominical, I checked into Tropical Sands Dominical Eco Inn to find welcoming service and loads of charm. My room ($75) featured a hand-painted mural of toucans, and the lush garden included a pavilion strung with hammocks.
After a walk around the tiny town, bounded by the Barú River, the ocean and the highway, I was hooked on Dominical’s bohemian, friendly vibe and unimpeded access to the uncrowded beach. Later, when word got around that a sloth was sleeping in a tree in the garden of La Junta restaurant, the hostess eagerly waved me in and pointed him out.
“This is the gateway to the Osa Peninsula and it’s still very wild and not overbuilt,” said Amy Bovis, the co-owner of Tropical Sands, naming the remote area about two hours’ drive south of Dominical.
I signed up for a four-hour whale-watching tour with Ballena Aventura ($89, including park admission and snacks) in the nearby town of Uvita, gateway to Marino Ballena National Park, where nine miles of beach — including a sandbar in the shape of a whale’s tail — border a marine sanctuary.
I spent most of a day in the park, spying pods of pantropical spotted dolphins, whales and a pair of olive ridley turtles mating (or “having fun,” according to our guide), followed by encounters with a troop of acrobatic white-faced monkeys and a lethargic sloth among the palm trees.
Where the Crowds Are
On my last day, I visited a marquee draw, Manuel Antonio National Park ($16), traveling about an hour north along the coast.
It’s hard to dodge the crowds at Manuel Antonio, but arriving early helps. Most of the wildlife, including coatis, toucans and sloths, were active within just a few hours of the park’s opening at 7 a.m.; by noon I had hiked every trail.
The howler and white-faced monkeys grew active with the heat, entertaining beachgoers who had made the Sunday trip to the park’s inviting blond strands.
Most of them were day-trippers. It was so quiet at my hotel, Costa Verde ($128 for a garden view room), that the clerk upgraded me to a deluxe ocean-view room at no charge.
In Manuel Antonio, my experience of the rainy season with passing showers, met a sodden reality in a ceaseless downpour that caught me out to dinner (shawarma plate, 7,500 colones, at Falafel Bar Manuel Antonio) a mile from my hotel.
All in all, the soaking was a small price to pay for sizable savings and generous elbow room.
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